Dubai, Jun 25 (PTI) : A 20-year-old Indian man was sentenced to three years in jail for luring a widow from India to Dubai, confining her to a flat and forcing her into prostitution.

The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the Indian servant, identified only as OS, of abusing his 31-year-old countrywoman MF's desperate need to support her children, then bringing her to Dubai and coercing her to work in the sex trade.

Prosecutors said OS lured her to come to work as a housemaid for 800 dirhams salary and then forced her to have paid sex with strangers under intimidation, Gulf News reported.

Prosecution records said a second Indian suspect, identified as C, was involved in the case but he remains a large.
When the accused appeared in court, he pleaded not guilty and claimed that C had hired him to watch the flat.

The widow came to Dubai in August last year to search for a job to support her two sons but returned to India when she was unable to find one.

At the end of February, however, she received a call from someone who offered her a job as a maid in Dubai, for 800 dirhams a month.

She arrived in Dubai on March 5, and was met by OS and another man. The men took her into a room in Naif. They took her passport and locked her inside the room.

They told her she must work as a prostitute for three months or pay them back 20,000 Indian rupees (Dh 1,311) for her travel cost.

She communicated with the police using a phone that she bought when she visited Dubai in August.

An Emirati anti-human trafficking policeman said MF was locked up inside the flat. A police team raided the flat and arrested OS after he broke down the kitchen window and tried to escape.

Yesterday's judgment remains subject to appeal within 15 days.