An expatriate private nurse allegedly stole more than BD25,000 from a bed-bound elderly patient who had difficulties in speaking following a throat surgery, the High Criminal Court heard.
The defendant is accused of taking her 79-year-old patient’s phone and transferring the funds using his online banking app to pay off loans back home in India.
Prosecutors say the 30-year-old Indian woman ‘exploited the victim’s condition and lack of mobility’ to carry out the alleged theft.
She has been charged with using the alleged victim’s electronic signature – a one-time password (OTP) – for her own advantage, to gain unauthorised access to his online banking and steal a total of BD25,750.
According to the Public Prosecution, the woman was able to access the elderly man’s BenefitPay app, which was connected to his bank account, and make the transfers to her own accounts.
After receiving the funds in her Bahraini bank account, she went on to transfer them back to India through an international wiring service, prosecutors claim.
When confronted, she reportedly returned BD3,500 to the victim – less than 14 per cent of the original sum – as she had spent the rest to pay off outstanding loans.
The incident first came to light when the patient’s 49-year-old son discovered that large amounts of money had been withdrawn from his father’s account in September and October 2025.
He traced the path of the funds, and reportedly discovered that they were credited to the bank account of the nurse who takes care of his medically-dependent father.
As the defendant failed to make full restitution, the son brought the matter to the attention of the authorities.
According to the son, his father had undergone a tracheotomy two years ago – a procedure in which an opening is made in the throat to insert a tracheal tube, which allows a patient to breathe without using the nose or mouth.
“My father is immobile and has great difficulty when it comes to speaking,” the Bahraini son said. “His condition gets worse when he tries to talk. He wasn’t able to talk to police officers who came to our house to inquire about the incident.”
The nurse was tasked with giving the elderly Bahraini his medications, maintaining his ventilator and changing his clothes, and was paid a monthly salary of BD300.
According to the prosecution she admitted during questioning to taking the victim’s mobile phone without his knowledge. “She stated that she used a financial app on the patient’s phone to move the aforementioned amounts, in chunks, into her possession, then in turn transferred the whole amount overseas,” the court was told. “Although she returned BD3,500 to the man and his family, she did not give back the rest of the money she illicitly took.”
A letter from BenefitPay detailed the transfers made from the victim’s account, to the defendant’s, to overseas. The letter also confirmed that the device, from which the financial transactions were made, belonged to the defendant.
In the most recent hearing, the prosecution asked to send a request to Indian authorities for judiciary and law-enforcement co-operation, to track the money and attempt to recover it.
Judges set March 31 as the date a verdict will be delivered in the case.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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