(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The Court of Appeals commuted the death sentence of a man who stabbed his pregnant wife to death two months after marriage, suspecting her of infidelity. He is sentenced to five years in prison and was ordered to pay Dh100,000 blood money to the woman's relatives.
According to court records, the woman married the accused, who held a different nationality to her, and who at the time was married to another woman. The man got angry after seeing his wife attending to a number of phone calls from the owner of the flat they were living in. He said his wife used to step away from him while talking to the other guy so he could not hear her. The owner of the flat, where the couple were residing, had handed the woman the flat for free before she got married.
The woman got married to the accused against the will of her family. She asked her husband for a divorce as she could not tolerate her life with him. To her shock, she realised that she was carrying his baby. When the husband demanded an abortion, she refused and filed a divorce case with the court.
On the morning of the incident, the couple entered into a fight after she told her spouse that she no longer wanted to live with him, while he insisted on an abortion. She told him that the baby was not his business and asked him how he could be sure that he was the father of the baby. The accused beat her and pushed her down. He then fetched a knife and stabbed her to death.
After the murder, the man headed to the Abu Dhabi airport to travel to a country that does not require a prior entry visa. The flight stopped over in Manama airport on transit on its course to land later in Khartoum, Sudan.
Later in the morning, the victim's brother-in-law reached the house to accompany her to the court's family guidance department. When he knocked on the door, the victim's sleepy brother opened the door and let him in. However, the brother found his sister lying on the bed in a pool of blood and they reported the incident to the police. The police arrested the husband in Manama airport before he could fly to Khartoum.
During investigation, the victim's husband and her brother blamed each other for the murder. The husband said that he had a quarrel with his wife on the day of the incident after she told him that the baby was not his.
He claimed that he left the country because he wanted to change his visa. He then alleged that the victim's brother killed his sister on the grounds that she married against his will.
However, the DNA test showed that the baby she was carrying was her husband's.
The Public Prosecution brought the charge of premeditated murder against the victim's husband. The court sentenced him to death, in addition to five years in jail on charge of the miscarriage of a pregnant woman by using a harmful tool, and one year more imprisonment for stealing the victim's cell phone.
The lower court's ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeals, but was quashed later by the Supreme Federal Court which ordered the case be sent back to the Court of Appeals to be heard afresh by a different bench. The court perceived that a provocative factor had made the husband kill his wife.
The judge summoned the proprietor of the apartment after finding out that the victim's phone had several calls made from the phone of the flat owner in one day, who claimed the victim was like his daughter.
The appeals court, accordingly, annulled the capital punishment ruling and sentenced the accused to five years in jail and ordered him to pay Dh100,000 in blood money, based on the fact that the victim used to provoke her husband by attending frequent phone calls from the flat owner, which had made the husband suspect her fidelity to him.
The five-year jail term was calculated from the date when the accused had been detained and taken into police custody.
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