Dubai: A jobless man has been jailed for three months for forging a desert safari driving licence and presenting it to tourism security officers when they stopped him.
Dubai Police’s Tourism Security Department was alerted that drivers had been using forged licences while driving desert safari vehicles in March.
Tourism security officers stopped the 39-year-old Pakistani man, asked him for his desert safari driving licence issued by the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), and then apprehended him after it turned out to be forged.
On Tuesday, the Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the defendant of tampering with the expiration date of the RTA’s desert safari driving licence and using it.
The suspect was taken into immediate custody, as he was present in courtroom three when presiding judge Mohammad Jamal read out the judgement.
The accused will be deported after serving his punishment.
A tourism security lieutenant testified that an informant tipped them off that drivers had been forging RTA desert safari driving licences and using them during safari tours.
“A special team was commissioned to chase those drivers and apprehend them. A patrol team apprehended the defendant once he presented a forged RTA licence to drive in the desert. The licence that he presented turned out to have been tampered with and it had expired in September 2014. The accused had altered the expiry date that read September 2018 instead of 2014,” the lieutenant said.
The Pakistani defendant was cited as admitting to prosecutors that he did not forge the licence but purchased it from someone in Pakistan for Dh65.
