Picture used for illustrative purpose only.

The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced a gang of seven Asians to seven years in jail to be followed by deportation and fined them Dhs12,000 for kidnapping a maid and selling her to another store for a sum of money.

Earlier, the maid absconded from her employer to work in a suspicious massage centre as a prostitute before the gang kidnapped her.

The court also sentenced the massage centre manager and his partner to one year in jail and the maid to six months to be followed by deportation. The court fined the massage centre and his partner Dhs100,000 and ordered all the materials seized in the centre to be confiscated.

The incident, which took place in the Grand Souq in Dubai, date back to August last year when an Asian maid reported to the police that she had been kidnapped by seven people while she was working in a massage centre.

She stated that a gang member entered the centre and asked for a massage service, adding that while she was massaging him, more gang members entered, alleging that they were policemen, and forced her and another woman to get into a vehicle driven by one of them.

The gang members locked her up inside a room in another emirate and asked her to pay them Dhs10,000 to release her; otherwise, they would sell her to another suspicious massage centre, she said.

She contacted her brother to provide the required amount but he gave them Shs2,500, she added, noting that they also took Dhs500 from her before she was released.

On interrogation, the maid admitted that she had entered the country on an employment visa to work as a maid for a family before she absconded from her employer to work in a massage centre that provided obscene services to increase her income, based on her friend’s recommendation.

The massage centre manager admitted that he and a partner were running a massage centre that employed women of different nationalities and offering obscene services.

On the day of the incident, the gang members entered the massage centre and stole Dhs8,000 in addition to mobile phones and the surveillance cameras of the centre before they kidnapped the maid and another woman and ran away, he said.

A policeman stated in the interrogations that a team of detectives managed to identify and hence arrest the gang members.

The defendants admitted that they had agreed to kidnap women in the suspicious massage centres, taking advantage of their unlicensed activities and inability to call the police because they were involved in illegal activities.

On the day of the incident, they kidnapped two women and forced them to work as prostitutes before they asked them to pay a sum of money to be released or, otherwise, to be resold to another massage centre.