Dubai: A woman manager who used a Roads and Transport Authority [RTA] parking permit issued to one of its male inspectors was handed a suspended jail sentence.
An Emirati RTA inspector was inspecting cars parked in Al Muraqqabat area when he saw his co-worker’s parking permit placed on the dashboard of a car in April 2018.
When the Emirati inspector called up his Iranian co-worker to check with him, the latter notified his colleague that the car on which that permit was placed was not his.
Then, the Iranian inspector asked him to call the police and wait for him until he arrived at the parking lot.
Police investigation revealed that the car belonged to the 34-year-old Syrian woman manager, who was summoned to the location.
In August, the Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the Syrian accused of using the RTA parking permit to park her car for free.
She was handed a three-month suspended jail sentence followed by deportation.
The Syrian woman appealed her primary ruling before the Appeal Court and sought to acquit herself.
Presiding judge Saeed Salem Bin Sarm rejected the defendant’s appeal and upheld the primary judgement.
Citing grounds of leniency, presiding judge Bin Sarm said the imprisonment will be suspended for a period of three years, during which the crime should not be repeated.
However, the accused will be deported.
The Syrian defendant pleaded innocent and contended before the appellate court that she did not have a criminal intention.
The Iranian inspector said the woman told him that she found his RTA parking permit two months before the incident.
“When we confronted her, she admitted that she had been using the permit to avoid being fined,” he testified to prosecutors.
The Emirati inspector testified that he called the police after he discovered that another person was misusing the permit.
The appellate ruling remains subject to appeal before the Cassation Court.
