Bangladeshi couple jailed for 7 years in Dubai

International Desk: A Bangladeshi man and woman were sentenced to seven years in jail for luring a teenage girl to Dubai and forcing her to work as a prostitute, a court heard on Thursday.

Dubai Police were alerted about the case of the two defendants keeping a 15-year-old tied up in a flat in Al Mutaina in December of last year. Police discovered the girl had been beaten and forced into prostitution.

The 30-year-old Bangladeshi man was arrested outside the building by an undercover officer, while the 33-year-old countrywoman was arrested later in a flat in Hor Al Anz.

They were charged with human trafficking and a court ordered to deport them after they had served their sentence.

The male accused was given an additional one year in jail for sexually assaulting the teenage girl while the female defendant will spend an extra six months in jail on a prostitution charge.

According to official records, police officers found the girl inside the flat talking to herself, staring at the ceiling and laughing for no reason.

The couple lured the girl to the UAE for work after changing her age in her passport.

The female defendant confessed that she arranged for the girl to travel to the UAE but was not involved in her imprisonment or forced prostitution.

A medical report from Rashid Hospital revealed that the girl now suffers from psychological issues.

The female defendant said that she left the flat and kept calling the victim from time to time. In one phone call, the girl told her that the male defendant raped her.

However, another Bangladeshi woman, 34, and an Indonesian woman, 27, were also found in the flat and arrested.

They were sentenced to six months in prison on charges of prostitution and for failing to report a human trafficking case to police.

The verdict will be subject to appeal within two weeks.

risingbd/Dhaka/June 29, 2019/AKA