Worker assaults, kidnaps cousin for Dh10,000 ransom

Dubai:

A worker has been accused of beating his cousin and collaborating with two others to kidnap him and ask for Dh10,000 ransom to have him released.

The 23-year-old Bangladeshi worker, S.M., his 36-year-old countryman electrician, M.M. and a 65-year-old Pakistani driver, A.S., were said to have forcibly lured S.M.’s cousin to their car and confined him in September.

The three suspects confined the 28-year-old cousin, M.M., in a farm in Marmoom, according to records, and refused to release him until his family paid Dh10,000 ransom.

Prosecutors charged the trio with kidnapping M.M.

S.M. was solely accused of beating his cousin.

The defendants pleaded not guilty when they appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Wednesday.

“I am just a driver. I did not kidnap or participate in this incident. I have been living here for 47 years and have never committed a crime. I am innocent. Please release me,” A.S. told presiding judge Urfan Omar in courtroom three.

“I swear to God I did not kidnap him,” S.M. claimed when he denied kidnapping his cousin.

M.M. claimed to prosecutors that the incident happened shortly after his cousin [S.M.] phoned him and asked him to meet him.

“When I went to meet him, the suspects forced me into a car that A.S. had been driving. They took me to a farm where they locked me up. They asked me to call my family in Bangladesh and asked them to send me Dh10,000 to have me released. They tied my hands and legs. My cousin beat me and then he asked me to give him his aunt’s [my mother] number … then he called her and asked for ransom. The next day they moved me to a site under construction in Jumeirah,” he testified.

Records said M.M.’s mother called her other nephew in Abu Dhabi and told him what happened before the latter reported the matter to the police.

A policeman claimed to prosecutors that the second cousin helped them in communicating with the suspects before they raided the site and released M.M.

The court will appoint lawyers to defend the suspects when it reconvenes on January 3.