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Jail and compensation for breaking cabbie’s nose

A doctor has been convicted of consuming hashish and sentenced to four years in jail to be followed by deportation for taking drugs.

The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court found the defendant, identified only as a plastic surgeon, who hails from Canada and working in a hospital in Abu Dhabi, guilty of beating a taxi driver black and blue, and ordered him to stay behind bars for three months.

The court also ordered the defendant to pay Dh16,000 to the victim as compensation for the unintentional fracture he caused in the nose bone of the victim when he punched him in the face. The punch resulted in eight per cent disability. The convict, after hearing the verdict, said he would appeal it at the court of appeals.

According to court records, the defendant was arrested after coming out of a hotel, for allegedly beating up a taxi driver in front of the hotel. A urine test showed that he had consumed the drugs.

The medical report stated that there was direct consumption of the drug and it was not a result of passive smoking or therapeutic intervention.

Defending himself before the public prosecution, the defendant said he had taken the drug indirectly while eating some sweet added to cannabis, while on a visit to his home country last September.

“Hashish could have reached my blood through passive smoking while I was coming out from a hotel, where some might have been smoking the drug,” he claimed.

On physically assaulting the cabbie, he said when he was getting out, the car door hit his hand, but the driver drove away without stopping. He had to then walk a few distance and tap the car asking him to stop. “The cabbie then got off the vehicle and hit me,” the defendant said.

The victim’s version was, however, completely different from the defendant’s. He said that when he saw the defendant pushing and shoving with the hotel’s security officers, he asked the defendant to call the police if there was a problem. “Instead of listening to me, he punched me in the nose,” the victim said.— news@khaleejtimes.com