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AN expat carpenter, who was found guilty of pushing his roommate down a flight of stairs and causing him to suffer from a permanent injury, has lost his objection against a court ruling.
The High Criminal Court upheld a three-year prison sentence in the case of the 35-year-old Bangladeshi man, who was last month convicted in absentia of fracturing the victim’s foot in the assault.
Court documents state that the flexi-visa worker experienced a collapse ‘equivalent to a one-storey fall’ after being violently shoved from the rooftop while he was smoking there.
According to a medical report, the victim suffered from fractures in his foot which required surgical intervention, including the permanent placement of screws and plates to set his broken bones.
Medical experts evaluated the 37-year-old Bangladeshi victim’s long-term injury as a ‘10 per cent disability’, and the report stated that he now walks with a ‘slight limp’, and still experiences swelling and pain in the site of the injury.
Before the assault, the two compatriots had got into a fight over BD20, which the victim had lent the defendant.
“When I asked him for my money back, he said that I had no way to prove that he owed me anything,” the victim told the Public Prosecution.
“After I told him I was going to report him to the police, and was descending the stairs, he pushed me and I tumbled on the steps and onto the ground.”
The defendant pushed the victim with both hands to his chest, leading him to fall backwards.
The Bangladeshi house painter stated that they had been playing cards before the row broke out.
The GDN reported that in February the court had found the Bangladeshi defendant guilty in absentia of assault and unintentionally inflicting a disability on the victim.
However, Bahraini law gives an opportunity to object to an verdict in absentia, if the defendant appears in court to challenge it, which the carpenter did, but the court upheld the ruling.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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