Dubai: An unemployed woman has been jailed for three months after police caught her carrying a forged Emirates ID card in her underwear.
The 41-year-old Uzbek woman, L.S., was walking alone in a residential area after midnight in March when a police patrol stopped her.
After failing to produce any personal identification documents, police accompanied her to the nearest police station where a policewoman found the forged Emirates ID card hidden in her underwear.
The Dubai Court of First Instance found L.S. guilty of forging the Emirates ID card in collaboration with an unidentified suspect and using it for illegal purposes.
Presiding judge Mohammad Jamal said the defendant will be deported following the completion of her jail term.
The Uzbek admitted that she used the ID card contending that she did not forge it.
The policewoman said her supervisor asked her to search the defendant when 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 the police station 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 had bought it for Dh2,000,” said the policewoman.
The arresting policeman testified that they stopped L.S. to check her identification because she was walking alone at night in a residential neighbourhood.
“She claimed that she had left her identification papers at home. We informed our supervisor and a policewoman was dispatched to the location. She provided us with an incorrect 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 card.
Sunday’s ruling remains subject to appeal within 15 days.
