DUBAI // A three-member human trafficking ring who locked up three women and a teenager in a flat and forced them to work as prostitutes was sent to prison for ten years, a Dubai court said this morning.
The defendants KK, 32, and LN, 27, both unemployed and from India, lured three victims aged 27, 35, and 38, from India and Bangladesh on promises of decent jobs in Dubai.
MA, 33, of Bangladesh, also raped a 15-year-old fourth victim, SM, three times after luring her into the country and forcing her to work as a prostitute, records show.
The men locked the women in a flat in the Naif area and forced them to have sex with other men in return for money.
Each man will be deported after serving his ten-year prison term, the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance said.
The court also ordered the closure of the flat where the victims were being held.
The adult female victims identified in records as K,S, and F told investigators that they were approached in their countries by people from their neighbourhoods, and were offered jobs as maids in Dubai.
After they arrived at Dubai International Airport between August and November 2010, the women were taken to an old house in the Naif area, where they met a number of women who had been locked up in the house, records said.
The women were informed by the other victims that they, too, would be forced into prostitution. K told prosecutors that when she refused to give in to the defendants' orders, she was beaten and kicked repeatedly on her abdomen and back.
SM, the 15-year-old girl, told investigators that MA had arranged with one of her female relatives to find him a maid who was interested in working in Dubai.
Prosecutors said SM's father agreed to send SM abroad, and changed her birth date on her passport, adding three years to her real age, which enabled her to travel and work in the UAE.
However, when she arrived in Dubai, she said, she was imprisoned and raped by MA before she was sent from one flat to another to offer sex to different men.
Police raided the flat in November last year after they were tipped off, and arrested the three men.
salamir@thenational.ae
