The General Department of Criminal Investigation and Investigations in Dubai Police revealed a murder that occurred in the middle of the day, in which an Indian businessman was killed. Although the crime occurred on a street crowded with cars and pedestrians, “the police did not receive a single report indicating that a crime had occurred, and no one came forward to testify, which led to the incident being registered as a normal hit-and-run accident at first.”
Acting Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police, Major General Khamis Mattar Al-Muzainah, told Emirates Al-Youm, “This crime has different humanitarian aspects. The victim (Shamir M.K.) left behind a family consisting of a girl and a wife about to give birth,” pointing out that the perpetrators almost escaped. They would have committed their crime had it not been for the investigators’ suspicions that there was a criminal suspicion in the incident.”
A number of security agencies in different emirates participated in the operation, which was called “bird hunting” due to the great difficulty in tracking down the perpetrators. Deputy Director of the General Department of Criminal Investigation and Research, Colonel Khalil Ibrahim Al Mansouri, expressed his astonishment at “the negative attitude of the people who were in the street at the moment the crime occurred,” considering that “it is unbelievable that this amount of violence could occur in the middle of the day without anyone seeing it.”
Al-Mansouri explained the details of the case, saying that the victim was a frequent visitor to the Dubai Islamic Bank, where he was spotted by the two defendants (one of whom did not have identification papers and was called “Mohammed A.F.” and the second was Iranian and called “Afshar N.Z”), adding that they decided to carry out their crime. In the middle of last week, one of them waited for the victim on the day the crime was committed in a car in front of the Dubai Islamic Bank in the Ras Al Khor area in Dubai, while the other waited for him inside the bank since nine in the morning.
After about three hours, the victim (who works in the fuel trade) came to the bank and withdrew 329,000 dirhams. After he left the bank, the perpetrators followed him until he reached a side street in the Al Awir industrial area, where they hit him from behind. He went down to check what had happened to his car (a Camry model). Then the two defendants ran over him, then one of them quickly got out and fled in the victim’s car, and the other followed him in the car in which he was traveling.
He continued that the victim breathed his last in the hands of ambulance personnel, and legal measures were taken to consider the incident an ordinary hit-and-run accident. The traffic prosecutor began his usual work, but the criminal investigation officers had a different opinion after it became clear to them that the man was driving his car and was not walking, and that he was present in the bank, which was approximately 1,500 meters away from the scene of the accident and about two kilometers from his workplace.
Based on this, their suspicions increased about the possibility of a criminal suspicion, and then it was confirmed when they visited the bank and learned that he had withdrawn 329 thousand dirhams, while they found only 10 thousand dirhams in his wallet. Therefore, the Investigation Department immediately prepared a field work plan headed by the Deputy Director of the General Department of Criminal Investigation and about 60 teams. The search operation included the emirates of Dubai and Sharjah, given that the victim lives in the latter. In addition, the results of the search ended with his car being found a few days later in the Muwailih area in Sharjah. It turned out to be damaged from behind, and the fire hose was emptied into it to erase any traces of it during the transport process. From the crime scene to the emirate, she also put her two license plates in her back bag.
Al-Mansouri said that the technical procedures for inspecting the perpetrator’s vehicle after it was found, in addition to the information of the field research team in charge of combing the area, revealed the type of car that was used to carry out the crime, which was a “Prado” model and white in color.
But the information did not specify more than that. Therefore, the movements of the specialized teams were based on searching for a “white Prado car.” Al-Mansouri added that the search teams passed a large number of garages based on the possibility that the perpetrators’ car had headed to one of them after colliding with the victim’s car. He said that about 3,700 cars were examined, including 2,800 in Dubai only, and searches revealed the presence of a car with the same specifications, driven by a person of Iranian nationality, and the patrols specialized in monitoring banks and money exchange offices noticed its presence and provided information. Preliminary descriptions of its driver are based on data obtained while he was in a bank.
After determining his identity, he was arrested last Sunday. When confronted, he confessed to committing the crime after he was found in possession of a large sum of money. It was found that he traveled to Iran after the crime occurred and returned to Dubai because he believed that the police had closed the case as a traffic accident. He identified his accomplice, called Muhammad, and directed the police to the car they used in the crime. It turned out that they had stolen it from an Indian who had left it running at a petrol station, but he had not reported it stolen.
Al Mansouri reported that criminal investigation officers arrested the second accused in the Emirate of Sharjah, near the residence of the first accused, in coordination with Sharjah Police. It turned out that he had a history of committing about eight various thefts.