Dubai: A 29-year-old Indian man and his 28-year-old wife have been charged in a court here with physically assaulting his mother, causing her bone and rib fractures, internal bleeding as well as severe burns and unintentionally causing her death, according to a media report.
The man and his wife, whose identity have not been revealed, tortured the elderly woman repeatedly and they even cut her right eye iris out and part of her other eye, the Court of First Instance heard.
The torture is believed to have lasted from July 2018 till October 2018. A forensic doctor said that the elderly woman weighed just 29kg at the time of her death, the report said. The couple has been detained but they denied the charge. A case was registered at Al Qusais police station.
The case was exposed by the couple’s 54-year-old neighbour, who is a hospital employee. The Indian witness recounted how the man’s wife visited her at her apartment in the same building.
“She was then holding her daughter. She claimed that her mother-in-law had come from India but did not take proper care of their daughter and that the girl would often fall sick while in her care. She wanted me to look after the girl until she came back from work,” the reported quoted the neighbour as saying.
About three days later, the witness spotted an elderly woman lying down in her neighbours’ balcony. “That woman was almost naked with apparent burn marks on her body. I informed the security guard,” she said.
The witness said she then knocked on the couple’s door. “I found his mother on the floor… She was in a critical condition and needed urgent medical treatment. I called the ambulance. The defendant remained in the flat and refused to go with his mother. I told the paramedics he should go along. He went later after they talked him into it,” accounted the witness.
A Filipino paramedic, 36, recalled how he found the victim in a very bad shape in her son’s flat.
“She was in awful pain. She was tortured repeatedly over a short span of time. Burns covered 10 per cent of her body. The bone and rib fractures, internal bleeding, beating with different tools, burns, negligence and starvation have all led to the deterioration of her health condition,” the doctor said.
According to a hospital certificate, the woman died October 31, 2018. The trial has been adjourned until July 3 and the couple will remain in custody till then.
PTI
