Dubai: A housewife has been sentenced to two years in jail for assaulting her maid and beating her repeatedly with a rod for one month until she became permanently disabled.

The Emirati housewife, Q.M., began assaulting her Indian maid with an iron rod since she joined work and constantly beat her during Ramadan until the day she fell unconscious on the balcony in July.

The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted Q.M. on Tuesday of assaulting the maid and causing her 60 per cent permanent disability in her limbs in addition to other physical injuries.

Presiding judge Mohammad Jamal sentenced the Emirati in absentia after she failed to appear in court and enter a plea.

Q.M. was the one who had reported to the police, according to records, that her maid had fallen down unconscious in the balcony.

The maid said the accused hired her through a labour supply agency and she was responsible for house chores.

“I worked for her for nearly eight months and she never paid my salary. I lived with the defendant and her family. She started beating me with the rod in Ramadan. She battered me on my back, head and limbs. She once pushed me hard and I banged my head against a closet. I always had bruises, injuries and was in pain. I had a heart surgery and an operation in my fractured arm during the time, when I was hospitalised for 75 days. She constantly beat me because she said I did not work properly. I did not complain to anyone that she constantly beat me … I couldn’t contact the labour supply agency because she took away my mobile phone. When police came to the flat, they found me unconscious in the balcony. Q.M. had beaten me and locked me out in the balcony for two days where I was left injured and unfed … my hands were so swollen that I could not open the balcony door,” the maid claimed.

A police lieutenant said the defendant had initially reported to them that the maid had fallen.

“A police patrol and an ambulance car were dispatched to the flat. The maid was rushed to hospital at 1am and it was discovered that she had been brutally assaulted. She had fractures and injuries in her limbs and other parts of her body. Primary interrogations at the crime scene [the flat] revealed that the maid had been living in the balcony where we found leftover food, a sponge mattress and the maid’s clothes. The iron bar used to beat the maid was found in the flat. The defendant alleged that the maid worked hard for the first three months before she stopped working and asked to be sent back to India. Q.M. claimed during police questioning that she beat the maid after they failed to convince her to honour her labour contract,” he claimed.

The accused has to surrender herself soon and she can request a retrial as per the Criminal Procedures Law.