DUBAI // A mother of five who forged documents in an attempt to make a newborn child her own was given a suspended one-year prison sentence on Wednesday.
Emirati S A did not deny the charge at Dubai Criminal Court in January, and said she wanted only to help the biological mother because her baby had been born out of wedlock.
Records show that the child’s real mother, M M, 45, from Oman, approached S A after becoming pregnant by her neighbour’s son in her home country.
The 52-year-old Emirati had been seen accompanying the biological mother to the Iranian Hospital, near Satwa, during her pregnancy.
On April 8, 2007 – the day of delivery – documents submitted to the hospital carried the name of the defendant and not the real mother.
The next morning, the mother of the child and the defendant left the hospital. The baby boy was named Khalid and lived with the defendant as her own son until he was five, when the ruse was discovered.
S A was referred to Dubai Criminal Court to face charges of attributing a child of others to herself and her husband and of forging hospital documents by adding her name as the mother of the child.
She was also charged with using the birth announcement provided by the hospital to obtain an inheritance letter from an Ajman court after the death of her husband, an attempt to gain an official document linking the boy to her husband.
“I just wanted to help the mother of the child,” the Emirati said in court. “She called me when she was in her sixth month through someone but I didn’t know her. She didn’t want the child and I wanted to help her.”
Records show that S A had the baby for about a year before her husband died in a traffic accident.
After that, she started seeking a birth certificate for Khalid. When she failed to get one, S A went to the court in Ajman with two witnesses who testified that Khalid was her son from her dead husband. From this, she managed to obtain a determination-of-inheritance certificate.
“I was then contacted by Bur Dubai police station, where I underwent a DNA test, the results of which showed that I wasn’t the biological mother of the child,” she said.
The Iranian doctor who carried out the caesarean section on the biological mother said: “The pregnant woman’s name was S A, so after the delivery and when I saw the attached copies of her marriage contract, passport and husband’s passport, I noticed that the picture was of the woman who was accompanying the pregnant lady, and I informed the hospital’s management.”
It was unclear from court documents what has become of the child.
salamir@thenational.ae
