A man, who partially paid a sex worker for her services by giving her methamphetamine, was found guilty of assaulting a policeman and possessing narcotics, a court heard.
He was reportedly caught while picking up cash from a ‘dead mail’ spot in Naim after unknowingly selling 10 grammes of marijuana to an undercover informant.
The woman herself was found guilty of making a living through the vice trade and depending on the income generated by engaging in prostitution.
The two Bangladeshis were convicted at the High Criminal Court and both sentenced to a year in prison, along with the confiscation of drugs in their possession and deportation after competing their sentences.
A third Bangladeshi was found guilty of using meth recreationally, and was sentenced to six months in jail with a BD100 fine and subsequent deportation.
The incident reportedly took place after the first defendant was observed in the act of retrieving money from a dead drop location, and afterwards went to a hotel in Manama to meet up with the Bangladeshi woman.
Dead drops or ‘dead mail’ is a method of drug distribution that involves hiding the contraband in a pre-determined spot for the buyer to later pick up.
In Public Prosecution hearings, the man admitted to renting a room at the hotel to have sex with his co-defendant in exchange for money and methamphetamine.
After searching his apartment in Gudaibiya and finding a plastic pipe used to smoke the mind-altering drug, policemen raided the hotel room he was in with the woman to arrest him.
However, the defendant resisted being apprehended by officers, assaulting one in the process by pushing him to the ground, though the officer did not suffer any significant injuries.
Another water pipe and a plastic bag with a crystallised powder, which turned out to be meth, were found in the room. A policeman noted that both Bangladeshis appeared to be in an unnatural state, and the woman was also arrested as soon as female officers arrived at the scene.
She went on to admit the sex work charges, while all three defendants admitted to using drugs, and traces of meth were found in samples of their urine.
Lawyers asked judges to put the defendants in a rehabilitation facility instead of imprisoning them, but the court did not respond to the request.
The first defendant’s lawyer earlier claimed that his confession was invalid because it was ‘obtained through coercion’, and that policemen arrested him and searched his quarters on invalid grounds.
In the verdict, judges responded that the man was observed during the incriminating act of collecting cash from a dead drop location, and that his arrest was completely warranted.
The man even earlier admitted that he received drugs from an unknown individual in Bangladesh. The Public Prosecution asked the court to punish the suspects to the fullest extent of the law.
All three have now appealed the verdicts to the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court and the legal process continues.
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