23-year-old sentenced to death for murder, robbery

Sharjah - The police soon identified the 53-year-old deceased. According to his employer, the deceased was supposed to deposit Dh116,000 belonging to the supermarket at a bank. However, the money was found to be missing.

An Indian man has been sentenced to death for murdering an accountant working in the same supermarket as him, and robbing him. The 23-year-old defendant, Abdul Basit, stabbed the accountant, Abu Backer, several times with a knife and stole Dh116,000 he was to deposit in a bank.
The murder was reported on September 5, 2013.
The police soon identified the 53-year-old deceased. According to his employer, the deceased was supposed to deposit Dh116,000 belonging to the supermarket at a bank. However, the money was found to be missing.
There were no eyewitnesses to the murder and there were no security cameras in the industrial area where the deceased's body was found. The body was found in a small enclosure in his flat where the supermarket's revenues of the day were kept before being deposited in the bank.
The police did not recover the murder weapon from the flat. However, they found the knife's cover on a shelf inside the flat. And the defendant's fingerprints were found on this cover.
The police scoured the area and found three keys, covered with blood, kept on a tyre of a truck parked behind the building. The police arrested the suspect and confronted him with the evidence. He confessed to the crime then.
He said he saw the victim going into the flat and locking the door. He knocked on the door and asked the victim for Dh2,000. But the accountant just "yelled" at him and accused him of taking too many days off. The defendant then took out a knife, stabbed the accountant and fled with the money. After that, he threw the knife and his blood-stained clothes in the garbage bin. He then placed the robbed money inside a pillow and left the keys of the flat on the truck's tyre.
Medical reports showed that the suspect was stabbed on the neck, chest, stomach, legs and hands and it seemed as if the victim had resisted .
A colleague of the victim told the police that he had walked with the victim up to his flat since he was carrying the money. When they reached the flat, the victim got in and closed the door. He said, that he received a call later from another employee of the supermarket saying that when he opened the door to the victim's flat he found him lying in pool of blood.
Another colleague and roommate of the victim said after going to the mosque, that the victim returned to his room and both of them had food and went to the supermarket from where he collected the money returned by about midnight.
During the public prosecution investigation the accused said he worked as a salesman in the garments section of the supermarket and about seven months ago a dispute arose between him and the victim. He said the victim allowed all other employees to go on leave except him, and he once deducted his salary when he had to tale sick leave due to hypertension. He added that he had taken Dh3,000 from the victim as loan and he was pressurised to pay it back.
He said he went to the victim's flat at 11.45pm and asked him for some money but he abused him and refused.  The accused then asked the victim to cancel his visa and allow him to return home, but he just pushed him away. He fell near the store and that's when he saw a knife on the shelf. He took it and stabbed the victim and walked away with the bag containing money.
He initially told the police that one of this colleagues informed him of the murder and that's how he came to know of the incident. It was later that the CID confronted him and he confessed.
In June last year, the lawyer of the suspect asked for a grace period to negotiate with the family of the victim. Despite several attempts, the victim's son refused to pardon him or receive blood money and insisted on capital punishment.
Hence, based on Sharia law, the court has sentenced the 23-year-old Indian who is a Muslim to death.
amira@khaleejtimes.com