A SATELLITE installation technician has appeared in court accused of sexually assaulting a screaming housemaid after telling her ‘you will not be needing your clothes anymore’.
The 47-year-old Indian man denied charges of sexual abuse at the High Criminal Court. He is alleged to have groped the terrified Ethiopian woman at a house in Manama on November 29 last year.
The defendant was on duty fixing a satellite on the rooftop when he knocked on the maid’s bedroom door, a court heard. He then entered her bedroom and spotted her sleeping in her underwear.
The defendant is then alleged to have told the housemaid: “You will not be needing your clothes anymore”, before touching her inappropriately. When she screamed for help he fled and hid inside a bathroom, the court heard.
A brave Bahraini housewife and her son confronted the alleged sexual predator before handing him over to authorities, the court heard.
The victim described her shock when the defendant pounced on her in her bedroom. “I was sleeping when I heard someone knocking at my door,” the 25-year-old said, as she described her ordeal. “I then said ‘mama’, but no one answered me.
“Suddenly, an Indian man opened the door and walked into my bedroom. He approached my bed and said ‘you will not be needing your clothes anymore’. He then touched me and attempted to remove my underwear.
“I screamed for help and pushed him away as I put on my clothes and ran downstairs to my sponsor.”
The defendant denied the charges and claimed that he was simply using the bathroom inside the housemaid’s bedroom in a ‘she said, he said’ case before judges.
“I was working on the satellite and felt that I needed to use the bathroom,” he told prosecutors. “I then made my way downstairs before I entered a bedroom to use the bathroom.
“I saw the housemaid and she was covering herself with a blanket. She then claimed that I had sexually assaulted her, which is not true!”
Defence lawyer Mahmood Al Sammak requested his client’s acquittal due to a ‘lack of evidence’.
“There is no DNA traces that prove my client sexually assaulted the victim,” he told a leading judge. “The housemaid claimed that he had groped her. However, my client cannot be jailed just based on her claims.
“He was at the home fixing a satellite before using a bathroom.”
The trial has been adjourned until Tuesday for review.
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