Photo used for illustrative purpose.

A gang of four East European women forced a girl of the same nationality to work as a prostitute after luring her into the UAE to work as a saleswoman. The court sentenced two of them to three years in jail and the other two to three months to be followed by deportation.

The case dated back to November last year when the Criminal Investigation Department received a tip-off that a girl under 18 was being exploited to work as a prostitute by a group of women.

According to the statement of a policeman stated in the investigations, a team of detectives set a trap to arrest the gang red-handed. Accordingly, a policeman agreed with one of the women to have sex with the girl in a hotel room in Al Hudaiba in Dubai against Dhs700. Later, the woman and the girl came to the room and left after receiving the agreed amount.

The victim stated in the investigations that she met a woman from her home country through a social media programme, adding that the woman promised her to offer her an employment contract to work for a store for selling garments at a shopping mall. The woman sent the girl a visa and airway ticket to the UAE but the girl was surprised at the woman keeping her inside a residential apartment with other girls and forcing her to work as a prostitute.

The girl said she tried to escape from the apartment but could not and the woman asked her to give her a sum of money to let her go. In the meantime, the girl met another woman through an electronic app and told her story to her and the required sum of money needed for the woman to let her go. The other woman came to the apartment and paid the required amount to the first woman.

Much to the girl’s surprise, the other woman requested her to work as a prostitute against half the amount she would receive from her work. The two women and others doing the same business were later arrested.