Driver who molested 8-year-old girl in Dubai supermarket has sentence upheld

Girl had been sent to shop by mother but returned with wrong items so was sent back, which was when she was snatched by Pakistani driver.

DUBAI // A driver has lost his appeal against a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl in his car.

In March, Dubai Criminal Court found the 38-year-old Pakistani guilty of the charge so he took his case to Dubai Court of Appeal but it agreed with the lower court and upheld the verdict.

The girl, also from Pakistan, was buying some items for her mother from a supermarket near her home in Al Rashidiya on November 30 last year.

“He came towards me and started talking to me, then brought me fruit and asked me to try it but I refused and went home,” said the girl, who added that her mother told her she had bought the wrong items and asked her to return to the supermarket to get the right ones.

“When I returned I saw he was still there and offered me some fruit again but I refused, then he pulled me out of the supermarket and into his car,” the girl said.

He told her he only wanted to drive her home. “I told him that I did not ask for him to drive me home. He then took me to a nearby playground and parked the car,” said the 8-year-old.

The man started kissing, hugging and touching the girl before he took off his trousers.

“I begged him to take me back home and I was crying so hard, after which he drove me back, but asked me not to tell my family,” the girl added.

She told her mother, who then called the father.

“Both of them, my wife and my daughter, were crying hysterically on the phone when they told me what happened,” said the father, 44, who reported the incident to Al Rashidiya police station.

Supermarket CCTV footage showed the man approaching the girl several times and sticking his body to hers before he took her outside.

The man was arrested on December 9 and prosecutors said he confessed to kissing her on the cheek and forehead only.

However, he denied the sex attack in both courts. “I saw her next to a supermarket and she asked me to drive her home, and that’s what I did. I treated her like she was my daughter and I didn’t molest her,” the man told judges.

The man will be deported after serving his sentence.