Rented car used for bootlegging, prosecutors say

Man used fake passport to get the vehicle, court is told.

DUBAI // A 30-year-old man forged documents to rent a car he used for bootlegging, a court heard this morning.

The Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance was told that MM, an Indian, had forged a Pakistani passport after removing two of its pages and replacing them with pages from an Indian passport containing entry stamps from Dubai and Sharjah airports.

Prosecutors said he used the fake passport to hire a Toyota Corolla from Mecca Rent A Car in October 2008. The car was found abandoned two weeks later with 30 bottles of alcohol inside.

MM was arrested this year and accused of bootlegging. When he appeared before Judge Fahmy Mounir Fahmy, he denied the forgery and bootlegging charges, but admitted to presenting the documents to the car rental office, not knowing they were forged.