Dubai: Prosecutors lost their appeal against a worker, who was cleared of kissing a 13-year-old boy while performing ablution outside a mosque and forcing him into the washroom and kissing him again.

The 13-year-old French boy and his mother were holidaying in Dubai when they visited a landmark mosque in Jumeirah to offer the afternoon prayers in April.

The Frenchwoman asked three workers for directions to the prayer section for women while her son headed to the outside area to perform ablution.

In June, the Dubai Court of First Instance acquitted the 29-year-old Pakistani worker of kissing the boy.

Prosecutors appealed the primary ruling and asked the Appeal Court to overturn the suspect’s acquittal and imprison him.

On Wednesday, presiding judge Saeed Salem Bin Sarm rejected prosecutors’ appeal and upheld the worker’s innocence citing lack of strong and corroborated evidence.

According to the case, the man kissed the boy in the ablution area first, then made the boy go to the washroom where he kissed him a second time. The 13-year-old got irritated, pushed him away and ran out of the mosque looking for his mother.

The boy told his mother about the incident and she called the police.

The footage of the surveillance cameras clearly showed that how the worker asked the boy to follow him and then they were out of the camera’s view. The footage then showed the boy running out of the washroom.

In court, the worker refuted prosecutors’ accusation that he had molested the minor.

The worker strongly refuted contended that he didn’t touch the boy but he only guided him to the washroom.

The boy was cited telling prosecutors that after he had performed ablution, the suspect kissed him but he did not care thinking it was a normal thing unlike the second time when he tried to grab him.

“When he forced himself on me ... I pushed him and walked away from him,” the boy told prosecutors.

The mother claimed to prosecutors that she visited the mosque with her son to pray at 2.50pm when the incident happened.

“I went to pray and five minutes later my son stormed into the women’s section of the mosque and told me that the suspect had kissed him twice. When we went outside, the suspect had already gone,” she said.

A police sergeant said the suspect was apprehended three days later at the Jumeirah Open Beach.

Wednesday’s ruling remains subject to appeal before the Cassation Court within 30 days.