A man is on trial for allegedly faking a number of court verdicts and Public Prosecution orders in order to trick his uncle into lending him money to reportedly pay off his debts.
The 30-year-old Bahraini is said to have claimed that BD91,000 of his money was being held in escrow, and that the amount would soon be released and he would be able to repay the loans.
Prosecutors allege that he provided a forged document, attributed to the Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Ministry, to ‘prove’ to his uncle that he had that much money to his name in an escrow account. The defendant is being accused of three charges: forgery, using a falsified document with knowledge of it being faked and receiving funds through deception.
The 62-year-old uncle appeared before the court and formally withdrew his complaint against his nephew, though the withdrawal is not likely to be taken into consideration as a trial is already underway.
Authorities first learned of the allegedly forged papers when the elderly uncle’s son – the defendant’s cousin – asked a Northern Governorate employee whether or not the papers were real.
The civil servant inquired about the documents at the Public Prosecution and reportedly learned that they were not authentic.
An attorney, representing the suspect from Jidhafs, claimed that her client’s accusers did not submit an original copy of the allegedly forged papers, and only a photocopied or scanned version were provided as evidence.
“The so-called forgeries were passed around between different parties, which makes the documents seriously dubious,” lawyer Deena Al Qumaish argued in a defence memo presented to the court.
“It cannot be guaranteed that the documents were not doctored, altered or added to as it moved hands, and whether this can be attributed to the defendant.”
Ms Al Qumaish also referred to a testimony of one of the accusers, who stated that she had activated the disappearing messages features, so there was no evidence that the suspect was the one who sent them.
“Before us are documents, the source of which we do not know, and the sender and the medium of transmission is unknown, which invalidates it as a piece of evidence.”
The aforementioned accuser is the uncle’s daughter, a primary school teacher.
“My sister told me that the defendant was begging our father for money, and claiming that BD91,000 were about to be released in his favour,” the cousin earlier told prosecutors.
“My nephew has several debts and he asked for help in paying them off. He gave me a number of documents and verdicts which showed that he had money in escrow,” the uncle testified.
According to the prosecution, the defendant admitted to the charges against him, adding that all the documents given to his uncle were fake.
He said he falsified them after downloading genuine documents from a government portal and altering them on Microsoft Word, then printing and handing them to his uncle.
The Public Prosecution asked judges to penalise the Bahraini to the fullest extent of the law.
Judges set Tuesday as the date a verdict will be issued in the trial.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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