A Dubai court has jailed seven Indians and a Pakistani, two of them for life, for beating a man to death and burying his body in a shallow grave, The National newspaper reported on Wednesday. The English-language daily said the gang beat a rival bootlegger to death with swords, machetes, pipes and wooden blocks in November 2008.
Dubai's criminal court of first instance, it said, sentenced two Indians to life in prison for the murder, five other Indian men to 15 years each and a Pakistani to 10 years. The men are also on trial for the rape, torture and murder of two other rivals on January 1, 2009, the report said. The judge will hand down a verdict in this trial on February 7.
In another case involving bootleggers, a lawyer for 17 Indians on death row for murdering a Pakistani man in the emirate of Sharjah told AFP on Wednesday the sentence may be cut to three years in prison if they agree to pay blood money. The victim's family "have offered a settlement" in return for monetary compensation, lawyer Mohammed Salman told AFP by phone. The family had apparently previously refused to accept blood money. The lawyer insisted, however, that the defendants are innocent "as no proof has been found against them."
The matter has been presented to the "Indian consulate in the United Arab Emirates and the government in New Delhi, both of which have not yet replied," he said. On March 29, a court of first instance sentenced the men to die for beating to death a Pakistani man identified as Masri Khan, a rival bootlegger, in a ruling India described as "shocking." During a September hearing, key witness Mushtaq Ahmed Fateh told the Sharjah Court of Appeal he did not recognise any of the defendants.
The head of Lawyers for Human Rights International, Navkiran Singh, had said earlier that the defendants were tortured and forced to confess while they were in custody. Alcohol is banned in Sharjah, which lies north of Dubai, where liquor can be sold by bars and restaurants with special permits.