Dubai: An Indonesian woman became paralysed in a fall while trying to escape from the third floor of a building which she claimed was being used as a prostitution den.
Prosecution records said police exposed the alleged brothel after the 21-year-old fell while trying to escape with the help of a rope from the third-floor flat where she claimed she was being forced into prostitution along with other women.
Prosecutors accused a 28-year-old Bangladeshi carpenter of exploiting the poverty of 21-year-old N.R. and six other girls and forcing them into the sex trade.
Chief Prosecutor Esmail Ali Madani asked the Dubai Court of First Instance to implement the toughest punishment applicable, a death sentence, against 28-year-old S.R.
"I am not guilty. I did not push or force any of the girls into prostitution. I did not do that," argued the suspect when defended himself before Presiding Judge Fahmi Mounir Fahmi in courtroom four on Sunday.
According to the charges sheet, prosecutors said the defendant, along two other suspects [who remain at large], formed an organised group of human traffickers. They were accused of exploiting seven women — N.R. her compatriot, four Bangladeshi woman and an Indian.
Locked up
Prosecution records said the defendants locked up the women in a flat in Bur Dubai against their will and forced them to have sex with strangers for money. S.R. was also accused of running a brothel.
Medical reports confirmed that N.R. sustained permanent disability and paralysis in both her legs.
"After I absconded from my Emirati sponsor for maltreatment, I coincidentally met a Pakistani man on one of Dubai's bridges. He offered me to work in a shop…he took me in his car and drove off to a desert area where he raped me and then he sold me for Dh3,000 to another man named Jahangir. I was kept in a flat where S.R. used to watch us. There were other women and we were all banned from leaving… we were locked up inside and forced to have sex with strangers," she said.
"Clients used to pay Dh50 a person and we didn't get anything. One day they brought another Indonesian girl… I convinced her that we should run away when everybody slept. I tied long white clothes together to use them as a rope and climb down from the balcony. The rope tore at the second floor and I fell," N.R. told to prosecutors.
