Dubai: An employee has been accused of forging a parking ticket to park his car for free at a Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) paid parking area, heard a court on Thursday.

An RTA parking inspector was inspecting a paid car park facing a mosque in Al Ghusais area when he found a car that had parking ticket on the dashboard with obvious handwriting on it in October. After discovering that the parking ticket had been tampered with, the inspector alerted his supervisor, who instructed him to notify the police about a suspected forgery, said records.

A police patrol was dispatched to the car park and the car owner was identified as a 33-year-old Indian employee, who was summoned to the location immediately.

Prosecutors charged the suspect with tampering with an official document [RTA parking ticket] and changing the date from October 5 to October 6.

The suspect pleaded not guilty when he showed up before the Dubai Court of First Instance.

His lawyer asked presiding judge Urfan Omar to adjourn the case to give him time to prepare his arguments.

The RTA inspector testified to prosecutors that he discovered the forgery at 9.30pm.

“When I double checked the ticket on the dashboard, I realised that the typed number had been altered by handwriting. The person had fudged the typed date and wrote a new date with pen … the date was changed from October 5 to 6. Once I notified my supervisor at work, he instructed me to call the police. A patrol was dispatched to the location and they managed to call the owner [suspect] of the car. When he arrived, we asked him if he had tampered with the date on the parking ticket and he admitted that he had done it,” the inspector claimed to prosecutors.

The trial will resume on December 14.