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Three years jail for sex crime

ABU DHABI — The Federal Supreme Court has sentenced a defendant to three years in jail and ordered him to pay blood money for killing a woman who refused to have sex with him.

The defendant will also receive 200 lashes for committing adultery. The Public Prosecution charged a Pakistani identified as Lal H. with killing the woman identified as M. B. by hitting her on the back of her head with a solid object and beating her to death. He also faced the charge of multiple adultery with another woman.

According to court records, an engineer supervising construction of a villa informed its owner about a woman's body lying inside.

The police after investigation arrested the defendant who confessed to having sexual intercourse with the woman for a commercial consideration.

On the same day of the murder, he asked her to sleep with him again and when she said no, he took a brick and hit her on her head till she fell down on the ground. Then he suffocated her with his trouser and continued to beat her severely till she died. He then wrapped the body with a plastic bag and fled.

Representative of the heirs of the deceased informed the Court of First Instance they were prepared to withdraw their demand for death penalty and accept the blood money. The Court sentenced Lal to life imprisonment and ordered him to pay Dh 100,000 as blood money. Being a married Muslim, he would have been stoned to death for committing the sin of adultery.

In his challenge before the Shariah Court of Appeals in Abu Dhabi, Lal denied committing adultery but confessed to having killed the woman. He said that he agreed with her on a specific amount of money for sex but she changed her mind. This had angered him and he had killed her.

The Court reduced the verdict on the adultery to 200 lashes and three years in jail and upheld the other sentence. He contested the verdict again saying that two crimes of adultery and killing should be merged together as they took place in one location and time.

But the Supreme Court held that the issue was up to the trial court and sentenced him to three years in prison instead of the life term, besides deportation.