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Cabbie accused of molesting passenger

A cab driver stood trial in the Court of First Instance on Tuesday charged with molesting a woman passenger.

The 37-year-old Egyptian cabbie allegedly lifted the Ukrainian woman’s dress and touched her thigh against her will while she was sitting in the front passenger seat.

The 29-year-old complainant, an employee, told the prosecutor that she was with a friend, her sister and brother-in-law when they took the cab driven by the accused around 3am that night in April. They had just walked out of a nightclub in a hotel on Shaikh Zayed Road and wanted to go to their hotel where they stayed. She sat in the front passenger seat and was wearing a long dress. She pushed the defendant’s hand when he touched her thigh telling him that he was crazy. When he tried to lift her dress, she told her companions.

When the cab reached their hotel, she and the others stepped out while her brother-in-law talked to the driver. Her brother-in-law told her and the others to wait inside until the police arrived. The brother-in-law, a 30-year-old Ukrainian trader, told the prosecutor that he saw his sister-in-law pushing the defendant’s hand away as he tried to touch her thigh.

The others stepped out of the cab while he stayed in the cab and told the defendant to wait for the police. He then moved to the front passenger seat but the defendant tried to push him out of the cab. The complainant’s sister, a 29-year-old housewife, said that the taxi fare was just Dh14 but the accused charged them Dh50. She confirmed the other witnesses’ testimonies.

mary@khaleejtimes.com