NEWS FROM THE UAE
Source : The National
Visitors to India hit by new visa rules
ABU DHABI - FEB 02: New visa regulations mean frequent travellers to India will be forced to wait two months before they can return to the country.
Visitors who wish to travel during that time, including those who have previously held multiple-entry visas, must seek an exemption, which can be obtained from a number of sources including heads of mission.
Business travellers to India can now only obtain a business or employment visa from the mission in Abu Dhabi or the consulate in Dubai if they have resided in the UAE for at least two years. Otherwise, business travellers must get a visa from their home country. However, an Indian embassy official said that in such cases, an exception may be made when the head of mission considers the reputation of the applicant’s company.
“The new restrictions are an effort to regularise visa laws, and move towards accountability, as well as an effort to safeguard national interests and security,” said an Indian embassy official in Abu Dhabi.
C Gangadharan, the assistant director of India Tourism’s regional office in Dubai, insisted that the changes, which have been implemented in phases over the past month, would not affect tourist or business travel.
“There is no decline from this part of the world in terms of travel to India,” he said. “As of now, we have heard of no complaints.
“Those who want to travel frequently, within the two-month period, will have to approach the consulate in Dubai or the embassy in Abu Dhabi, where they are willing to consider a special application, if they clearly state their purpose of visit.”
Non-Indian passport holders, especially those travelling as tourists, who already have long-term, multiple-entry visas to the country will need to make a special request and submit their travel details if they choose to travel back to India within a two-month time-frame.
“People will have to plan their holidays more carefully now,” said the embassy official. “They need to plan slightly in advance before they travel.”
Visitors wishing to travel in the region and return to India can receive an “endorsement” – in the form of a stamp on the visa from one of three sources: the embassy in their country of origin, before they begin their journey; in India, at any police station or the immigration office at departure; or from any Indian mission during their travels.
There is a fee for re-entry, according to the embassy official, and the time-frame for receiving an endorsement is the same as that for a new visa.
Matthew Cooper, a Dubai-based private equity executive who frequently travels to India for business, said he will have to forego his trip to Mumbai this month because of the new regulations.
“Generally speaking, India is getting more difficult to visit. Compared to other countries, it now takes the most possible time to process a visa and it has increasingly become very inconvenient.”
For Dr Kiran Shah and his wife, who are travelling through India and plan to spend a week in the UAE before returning there, it was a last-minute scramble to update their US passports and five-year multiple-entry Indian visas. With the rule change, the five-year visas required the special endorsement. In the end, they had to arrange for new visas at a cost of US$235 (Dh863) each.
“I did visit the Indian tourism office in the US and they mentioned that they are supposed to be informing everybody, but my wife and I did not receive anything,” he said.
Last year, the embassy in Abu Dhabi issued 14,358 tourist visas and 1,143 business visas.
Eight arrested in RAK for kidnapping and forcing new arrivals into prostitution
RAS AL KHAIMAH - FEB 02: Eight men who allegedly kidnapped women who came to the UAE to work in legitimate jobs and forced them into prostitution have been arrested, Ras al Khaimah Police said yesterday.
The gang is believed to have forced three women, two Asians and one African, between the ages of 20 and 25, to work as prostitutes.
The men were arrested, police said, after one of their victims got hold of a mobile phone.
Police arrested two gang members in a sting operation on January 21. The suspects entered RAK to collect money from a cousin of the woman, who contacted the gang in co-operation with police and told them she would pay to see her cousin. Police believe the gang planned to kidnap the cousin too.
The other suspects were detained five days later, in co-ordination with Dubai police, at two flats in another emirate where they kept their victims.
The alleged gangsters have been charged with human trafficking, abduction, adultery, sexual assault, making death threats, incitement to prostitution, violating residency law and forging business cards.
One of the women told police she travelled to the UAE after being hired by an Emirati man in Khor Khwair to work as a maid. Police said when she arrived at the airport, a driver working for the gang apparently did not deliver her to the sponsor, but brought her to a flat and threatened to kill her if she refused to have sex with him. After she refused, he and other gang members allegedly sexually assaulted her repeatedly over several days.
But when one of the gang members accidentally left his mobile phone behind in the flat, she contacted relatives in her home country.
The family then contacted a cousin working as a maid in RAK, who notified the woman’s sponsor. He contacted the RAK Police. The sponsor is not a suspect in the case. None of the women were charged with any crimes.
Police said they believed the gang operated in the UAE for six months and abducted women with different sponsors.
Major Gen Sheikh Talib bin Saqr, the head of RAK Police, pledged to support the national strategy to combat human trafficking and support its victims, irrespective of their country of origin.
Killer of five-year-old Moosa due in appeal court over death sentence
DUBAI - FEB 02: The fishing boat captain sentenced to death last week for the rape and murder of four-year-old Moosa Mukhtiar Ahmed will appear in the Dubai Court of Appeals on Sunday, prosecutors said.
Rashid al Rashidi, 30, became the 43rd person to receive the death sentence in Dubai since 1993, after he was convicted of killing Moosa in the toilet of a mosque in Al Qusais on the first day of Eid al Adha.
Unless the appeals court overturns the lower court’s decision, al Rashidi, an Emirati, will face a firing squad after serving six months behind bars for consuming alcohol.
Cases in which a defendant is sentenced to be executed are automatically referred to the appeals court.
A three-judge panel there will review the evidence in the case before referring their decision – either to uphold the verdict and sentence or overturn it – to the Cassation Court where five more judges will review the legal procedures that led to al Rashidi’s conviction.
All 11 judges involved in the case – including the three who passed last Wednesday’s verdict – must unanimously agree on the death sentence if it is to be upheld. A single dissenting voice among the judges would result in the sentence being reduced to life imprisonment.
Al Rashidi’s lawyer, Mohammed al Sa’adi, who represented him at his trial at the Criminal Court of First Instance, yesterday confirmed that he would not be representing him during the appeal process.
Mr al Sa’adi had stepped forward to represent al Rashidi when his original lawyer had refused to defend him because his crime was too repulsive.
“I have completed my duty at the lower courts when I responded to the courts’ calls,” he said yesterday. “I see no reason to continue as the appeals court will automatically assign a new lawyer to represent him.”
Al Rashidi is expected to be appointed a new lawyer at Sunday’s hearing. The case has been expedited at the Attorney General’s request since the defendant was charged by prosecutors.
According to Dubai Public Prosecution, al Rashidi is the third person this year to be sentenced to death in the emirate after two Indian men were found guilty of murder two days before him.