Dubai: A jobless man has been accused of forging a desert safari driving licence and presenting it to tourism security officers when they stopped him, heard a court on Tuesday.
Dubai Police’s Tourism Security Department were said to have been alerted that drivers have been using forged licences to drive in desert safaris issued from the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) in March.
Tourism security officers were believed to have stopped the 39-year-old Pakistani jobless man and asked him for his desert safari driving licence, according to records, and apprehended him after it turned out to be forged.
Prosecutors accused the suspect of tampering with the expiration dates of the RTA’s desert safari driving licence and using it.
The 39-year-old suspect failed to show up before the Dubai Court of First Instance where he was scheduled to enter his plea on Tuesday.
A tourism security lieutenant testified to prosecutors that an informant tipped them that drivers had been forging RTA desert safari driving licences and using them at safari tours.
“A special team was commissioned to chase those drivers and apprehend them. A patrol apprehended the 39-year-old suspect 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 suspect had altered the expiry dates that read September 2018 instead of 2014,” the lieutenant claimed to prosecutors.
The Pakistani suspect was cited admitting to prosecutors that he didn’t forge the licence but purchased it from someone who had forged it in Pakistan for Dh65.
Presiding judge Mohammad Jamal will sentence the suspect in absentia on May 22.
