Dubai: A jobless woman has been accused of forging an Emirates ID card that was found hidden in her underwear when police found her movements suspicious when they found her roaming around after midnight in Deira.
The 41-year-old Uzbek woman, L.S., was said to be walking alone in a residential area when a police patrol stopped her over doubts that she could be an illegal resident or wanted.
A policewoman is believed to have found the forged Emirates ID secretly hidden in her underwear of the woman, who was taken into custody after she failed to produce any personal identification documents in March.
Prosecutors charged L.S. with forging the Emirates ID in collaboration with an unidentified suspect and using it for illegal purposes.
The defendant, who is in custody, did not enter a plea when she appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Tuesday.
Presiding judge Mohammad Jamal did not hand out the accusation against the defendant.
He adjourned the case until the forged ID [currently confiscated and placed in a secure receptacle at Dubai Public Prosecution] is presented before the court on June 15.
The policewoman testified to prosecutors that her supervisor asked her to search the defendant once she was stopped in Al Riqqa.
“After the police patrol spotted the woman and stopped her on March 25, my commander commissioned me to search her. I took her to Al Muraqqabat police station’s detention centre and found the ID hidden in her underwear. The seized ID looked identical to an Emirates ID… that ID bore the woman’s photo. When I asked her about the ID, she claimed that she bought it for Dh2,000,” the policewoman told prosecutors.
The arresting policeman testified to prosecutors that they stopped L.S. to check on her identification after they suspected her because she was had walking alone at that late hour in a residential neighbourhood.
“She claimed that she had forgotten her identification papers at home. We informed our supervisor and a policewoman was dispatched to the location. She provided us with a wrong name when we asked her to identify herself,” said the policeman.
Prosecution records cited the suspect admitting that she bought the forged Emirates ID from Uzbekistan and that she had been deported earlier for flouting residency laws. She alleged that she didn’t use the ID.