Went to buy Eid clothes and ended up being accused of attempted theft.
Date: November 1, 2006
The Public Prosecution in Dubai initiated an investigation into an incident of attempted theft involving an Arab family residing in the UAE for 18 years. The wife, “N.A.”, falsely accused her husband, “M.M.S.”, of theft when all he did was accompany her to a “City Centre” store in Dubai to buy clothes for their children for Eid. The surveillance cameras captured the wife wandering through the aisles, selecting clothes for her children, and then swapping the price tags of the chosen items with lower-priced ones. She did not realize that the cameras were monitoring her every move. After filling the shopping cart with Eid clothes, she believed she had obtained a significant haul and was about to proceed to the cashier when her husband, who was accompanying her without being aware of her actions, was stopped by a center staff member who informed him of what his wife had done and that her actions were recorded on the cameras. As soon as the wife realized her deception had been exposed, she withdrew her children and fled, leaving her husband to face the consequences alone. The husband expressed his willingness to pay for the original items, and he indeed made the payment. However, the security personnel had already informed the investigators, and as a result, they refused to release him until the police arrived to rectify the situation that the wife had caused. The husband, a respected individual working in the country for 18 years, found himself in an unfortunate predicament due to his wife’s actions. The police expressed their readiness to settle the matter if the complainants, who insisted on pursuing the investigation, were willing to drop the charges. The husband had no choice but to seek the assistance of a lawyer to extricate himself from this situation. His defense, represented by Nasser Hashem Al Kamali Advocates, submitted a request to the Public Prosecution for a psychiatric examination to be conducted by a psychiatrist on the wife to confirm the presence of medical certificates submitted by the husband, indicating that she suffers from a mental illness and has caused similar situations to her husband on multiple occasions, unintentionally and without the intention of theft, due to her lack of awareness of her actions, which is a well-known fact in the field of psychiatry.