Maid threatened colleague with knife over affair with gardener, Dubai court hears

A maid held a knife to a woman's throat after she threatened to tell their sponsor she was having an affair with the gardener.

DUBAI // A maid having an affair with a gardener held a knife to the throat of her colleague when she threatened to tell their boss, a court heard yesterday.

SK, 22, said she walked into her bedroom on July 6 last year to find the 30-year-old maid, TH, having sex with SA, a gardener with Dubai Municipality.

She then threatened to tell their sponsor, whose house they were living in, at which point the maid grabbed a knife and held it to her throat.

"She told me: 'I will kill you if you say anything about me having a strange man in our room'," said the younger maid. She added that both of them knew the gardener because he took care of their sponsor's plants in front of the house. She said they often provided him with food and water.

The gardener, a 42-year-old Egyptian, told prosecutors that he loved the maid and intended to marry her.

However, at the Misdemeanours Court yesterday both the gardener and the maid denied a charge of having consensual sex. They both denied another charge of trespassing into the house of their sponsor AA in Al Towar Area 3.

The maid, who is from Indonesia, is also on trial at the Criminal Court on the charge of threatening her compatriot colleague with a knife.

The next hearing of the Misdemeanours Court was scheduled for September 17.