Sharjah Sharia court gives capital punishment to Indian labourer

SHARJAH - The ‘Sharjah Sharia Court of First Instance’ has convicted an Indian man and sentenced him to death for premeditatedly beating another man to death.

According to Gulf News, the court found him guilty of beating an unidentified man to death in labour accommodation in the Al Saja’a Industrial area in the Al Zubair rural district of Sharjah, located behind the cement factory.

However, according to the court papers, the 35-year-old man, S.S., has denied of the murder charges and claimed that he didn’t even know the victim’s identity.

S.S appealed the death sentence and his case is now being reviewed by the Appeal Court in Sharjah.

He told police that a few days before the crime, five illegal and jobless Indian workers approached the labour accommodation where he was staying. They were being asked to stay with him in return for cleaning the area every day.

“On the day of the crime the five men were sitting near my place consuming alcohol and that the they cursing me. S.S. I fought with them and pushed one of them to the ground, his head hit the floor and he started bleeding,” he said.

S.S. said that the five men were robbers and they owed him money and took his belongings. He, later, informed the labour accommodation foreman and its owner, who reported the crime to police.

The lawyer of S.S. urged the court for leniency as S.S. was only defending himself. He said the murder was not intentional, but the court refused the defence.

According to the Maliki School of the Sharia Islamic Law of article No.1 of Civil Transaction Law, which is followed in the UAE, there is no crime here that can be described as “beating up to death”.

“There is nothing here considered as beating to death. Murder is murder, even if the person was defending him or herself. The punishment of premeditated murder is Al Qisas (capital punishment), which is usually by firing squad. This can be reduced to one month to three years in jail if the blood parents of the deceased pardon the killer,” the Gulf News quoted the Sharia Islamic Law. (ANI)