Dubai court upholds life sentence of man who stabbed manager over unpaid salary

A man who stabbed his company's finance manager 30 times over unpaid salary had his life sentence upheld by the Cassation Court yesterday.

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DUBAI // A man who stabbed his company's finance manager 30 times over unpaid salary had his life sentence upheld by the Cassation Court yesterday.

The court agreed with the sentence by the Appeals Court, which had overturned an earlier death sentence.

NM, 35, from India, claimed to have carried out the attack because he was owed thousands of dirhams in unpaid salary.

He hit the Dubai Holdings manager Shankari Maran eight times on the head with a hammer before stabbing him.

Police found the manager's body facedown in a pool of blood on the floor of his Karama flat on July 9, 2011. A broken hammer was found nearby.

Friends and relatives of the manager raised the alarm after he failed to return telephone calls.

The trial heard the murderer had worked as a driver at the company from 2007 until May 2010, when he resigned.

"When I met him during the exit interview he said that he was owed Dh45,000 and claimed that he had nothing to lose and would chase Mr Maran to his home in India if need be," recalled SJ, another manager at the company. "He said that if he was caught his family could take care of his children."

The murderer confessed to policeman JM, 27, who said: "He noticed a hammer near him. He grabbed it and hit the victim."