Cake delivery man sentenced to one year in jail for molesting girl in Dubai

Dubai: A Dubai-based delivery man has been accused of sexually abusing a girl while delivering a birthday cake. The Dubai Court of Appeal reduced the initial three-year imprisonment sentence issued by the Court of First Instance to one year in jail, followed by deportation.

According to Dubai Courts, the 36-year-old defendant had apparently come to deliver a cake ordered by the girl’s grandmother for the birthday of her daughter-in-law. He molested the girl when he found out that there was no adult family member present in the apartment located in the Jebel Ali area of Dubai in February this year.

The father of the victim testified that he received a call from his eight-year-old daughter about receiving the delivered item, though, in reality, the family had never ordered it.

“My daughter was with her four-year-old sister in the house. When I spoke to the delivery man over the phone, he told me that my mother — who was then in our home country — had ordered a surprise cake for my wife on the occasion of her birthday through a phone app,” said the father on record. The defendant told him that the payment had already been done for the cake.

The daughter then told her father that she had received the cake, but the defendant was still standing at the apartment door. The father then asked her to pass the phone on to the defendant so that he could speak to him directly. “He told me that he was checking to make sure it was the correct address. After a minute, my daughter called me again, saying that he had abused her,” added the father on record. The father then told the girl to lock the door and he reported the incident to Dubai Police.

During interrogation, the defendant admitted to abusing the girl, but he denied the charge in the courtroom and claimed that he had only put his hand on the girl’s head.