Dubai: A worker has been jailed for six months for molesting a teenaged girl during Ramadan while she stood in a queue at a hypermarket.
The 13-year-old Emirati girl had accompanied her mother to the hypermarket to do some shopping for Ramadan in Bani Yas area.
When the teenager was standing in a queue, she felt someone standing behind her, clutching his body to hers very closely and then groping her.
After the girl told her mother about what had happened, the mother took her daughter to the hypermarket management’s office to check the surveillance cameras.
The mother reported the matter to the police that apprehended the groper, who turned out to be a 24-year-old Indian worker.
The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the Indian defendant of groping the teenager.
When he showed up in court, the accused admitted that he abused the fact that the girl was present alone between the shelves when he groped her.
According to the primary ruling, the accused will be deported after serving his imprisonment.
The girl told prosecutors that the incident happened at 5pm.
“I left my mother and went to check one of the shelves … I felt someone chasing me. Then that someone [defendant] came from behind and he attached his body to mine. Then he touched me indecently. I told my mother about what had happened,” she testified.
A Filipina clerk at the hypermarket said the mother reported the matter to the management.
“When she checked the CCTV cameras with her daughter, the teenager identified the culprit … then the police were called in,” she said. The defendant admitted to prosecutors that he groped and hugged the girl from behind when she was between the shelves.
The primary ruling remains subject to appeal within 10 days.
