DUBAI // A man has been sentenced to a year in jail after being found guilty of pulling an eight-year-old girl into his car and molesting her.
Pakistani H K, 38, denied a sexual assault charge when he appeared at the Dubai Criminal Court last month.
“I did not do any of those things. I saw her next to a supermarket and she asked me to drive her home, and that’s what I did,” H K said in the court.
On November 30 last year the girl, A N, also from Pakistan, was buying some items for her mother from a supermarket near her home in Al Rashidiya.
“He came towards me and started talking to me. He brought me fruit and asked me to try it, but I refused and went home,” said A N, adding that her mother told her she had bought the wrong items and asked her to return to the supermarket.
“When I returned I saw he was still there and offered me some fruit again but I refused. He pulled me out of the supermarket and into his car,” said the victim.
She said H K told her that he only wanted to drive her home.
“I told him that I did not ask him to drive me home. He then took me to nearby playground and parked the car,” she said.
The accused 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 said.
She told her mother about the incident and she called her husband, A M, 44, who reported the incident to police.
CCTV footage showed H K approaching the girl several times and placing his body on her before taking her out of the supermarket.
He was arrested on December 9. Prosecutors said he confessed to kissing the girl on the cheek and forehead only.
salamir@thenational.ae