Businessman accused of illicit sex cleared by appeals court in Dubai
dubai — An Indian businessman, who was accused by his estranged wife of indulging in sex acts out of wedlock, has been cleared by a court. The Court of Appeals also cancelled his deportation order.
In November 2015, the businessman had been referred to Al Barsha police station after his wife — with whom he had marital disputes — accused him of kissing another woman and having her perform a sex act on him. His wife, who filed a civil lawsuit claiming damages, submitted 46 photos as evidence in the illicit sex case.
Defence lawyer Ali Al Shamsi of Al Shamsi and Partners, Advocates and Legal Consultants argued before the court that the evidence used against his client was “invalid”. “The two CDs and the plaintiff’s accusations are unsubstantiated as the photos are not his.”
He stressed that the photos attributed to his client were “tampered with”. “The plaintiff fabricated them to implicate the defendant with the help of her son from a previous marriage.
“The (lower) court had overlooked my client’s request to summon a criminal evidence report expert for testimony. Besides, the personal computer or laptop the plaintiff extracted the photos from was not examined to determine the storage source of the 46 photos.”
The lawyer also referred to the “contradiction” between the three criminal evidence technical reports and the public prosecution investigation on one hand, and the testimony of the technical report expert in court on the other.
“The photos stored in the CDs were most probably taken from a
The son claimed he discovered the photos in the family’s villa in March 2016, while his mother said he saw them in April 2015.” Ali Al Shamsi, defence lawyer
smart phone and not extracted from a laptop or a personal computer, as the plaintiff claimed in her accusations.”
The “conflicting statements” given by the plaintiff and her son about the date he discovered the obscene photos on her laptop was “proof they made up the whole story”. “The son claimed he discovered the photos in the family’s villa in March 2016, while his mother said he saw them in April 2015. That one-year contradiction gap in giving the exact date blows off the credibility of their allegations,” the lawyer told the court. He requested the court to quash the primary ruling, declare his client innocent and dismiss the civil lawsuit.
Earlier verdict
On July 25 last year, the Court of Misdemeanours had sentenced the businessman to one month in jail to be followed by deportation and ordered him to pay Dh21,000 in civil provisional damages. The court also ordered him to pay the legal expenses and Dh500 worth of lawyer’s fees. On November 26, the Court of Appeals upheld the ruling.
After the defendant challenged the verdict, the Court of Cassation overturned the ruling in January this year and ordered that the case be referred back to the appellate court for a retrial by a bench of different judges.