Legal assistance provided by Salam Pappinissery; Kannur native acquitted in rape case

Sharjah: The Sharjah Court has found Muhammad Hanifa, a native of Kannur and Pappinissery, innocent, who was sentenced to prison following a complaint by a Sudanese national. Hanifa, who had been in legal trouble for the past two years, was able to be released from prison thanks to the work of Salam Pappinissery, a well-known legal representative and social activist in the UAE.

He has been living in the UAE for 20 years and has been running a typing center in Sharjah Al Qasimiyya since 2017. During these 20 years, no complaint or case has been filed against him.

The incident in question took place in November 2018. While Hanifa was entering a restaurant where she regularly dined, she touched a Sudanese boy standing at the narrow entrance without any malicious intent and only asked him to move away. Hanifa apologized to the child who was upset about being touched, but the child escalated the situation and called his father to the restaurant.

The child's father then created a ruckus at the hotel, called the police, beat Hanifa while she was eating, and forcibly dragged her to the police vehicle. Even after reaching the police station, Hanifa was beaten until she lost consciousness.

Hanifa's sponsor reached the police station at midnight after learning about the incident and, based on the mediation he conducted, Hanifa was released from the station the next morning. However, when she went to the same police station to file a complaint against the brutal beating she had suffered for no reason, Hanifa learned that the child's father, a Sudanese national, had filed a complaint against her for raping her child. The investigation into Hanifa's complaint was then temporarily suspended, and Hanifa was again sent to prison following the complaint filed by the opposing party.

When the case reached the court, Hanifa was found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison and then to deportation. However, Hanifa approached Salam Pappinissery to prove her innocence. Understanding Hanifa's financial crisis, Salam Pappinissery took up the case by providing him with free legal aid and filed an appeal against the court verdict. He also initiated further proceedings on the complaint filed against the officers who had attacked Hanifa without cause. After the subsequent legal battle, Hanifa got the deportation verdict vacated, but the court did not issue a verdict declaring her innocent. However, in the complaint filed against the officers, two officers were sentenced to prison and fined for the unprovoked attack.

Then, through Salam Pappinissery, she approached the Supreme Court regarding this case and filed a petition. Later, the Supreme Court asked the Sharjah Criminal Appeal Court to consider the case again and the appeal court considered the case. In subsequent sittings, Hanifa's advocate submitted a memorandum explaining that she was innocent, that there was no evidence to support the charge, that she had not touched the child's body with malicious intent, and that this would be clear if the CCTV footage was examined. Based on the memorandum submitted with accurate descriptions, the court carefully examined all the evidence and found Hanifa innocent.