Ten years in jail for man who trafficked wife into prostitution

DUBAI // A man who sold his wife into prostitution after threatening to kill her and their three children if she refused has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Indian A S, 38, forced his spouse of 15 years to prostitute herself after bringing her to the UAE in 2011.

When customers came to have sex with her the husband would leave to buy groceries, hide under the bed or pretend he had passed out from drinking.

Sometimes the wife was forced to have sex with men while her children were asleep in the same room.

The husband first asked his wife, 30, to have sex with E K, the landlord who owned the room in which they lived.

When she refused he beat her, then invited the landlord to their room without her knowledge.

He told her he had to go to buy groceries and while he was gone the landlord arrived and violated her.

When the husband returned to find his wife crying he smiled at her and said he was sorry. But he continued to invite men to the room to have sex with her.

He would call customers and talk in a feminine voice so that they believed it was his wife arranging the meetings.

Other times he took her to nightclubs, where he would sit her at a table and tell men she would have sex with them.

During the husband’s trial at the Criminal Court his wife recalled how her husband had once demanded a customer bring alcohol with him.

“They both drank the alcohol then my husband pretended he passed out and the man had sex with me while my kids were sleeping in the room,” she said.

In March last year, the husband forgot his mobile phone and his wife used it to call her sister in India.

Police arrested him as he was taking his wife to a nightclub.

The woman and the three children were taken to the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children.

Prosecutors charged the husband with human trafficking, and the landlord E K, 34, from India, was charged with having sex with someone against their will.

The landlord was sentenced to one year in jail. Both men will be deported after completing their jail terms.

salamir@thenational.ae