DUBAI (AlArabiya.net, AFP)
A Dubai court has fined an Indian man who said he was rehearsing for a role in a Bollywood movie for cross-dressing after he was seen applying mascara at a shopping mall, a local newspaper reported.
The court found the 45-year-old administration manager identified only as P.K. guilty of cross-dressing in public, the English-language Gulf News said.
"I'm not guilty... I was cross-dressed because I was training to perform a woman's role in Indian cinema," the newspaper reported the defendant as telling the public prosecutor.
The court fined him 10,000 dirhams ($2,700) and suspended an initial six-month sentence for three years since it has first offence but he is not allowed to repeat the act.
However the prosecution has appealed the verdict to seek a harder punishment, the paper said, adding that the appeal will be heard next month.
Undercover policemen who apprehended the man said his outfit was glittering like "a woman's clothes," and that "he wore a bra, mascara, women's perfume and a wig" at the Mall of the Emirates, the paper added.
“I didn’t intend to go the mall but I went there because I received an urgent phone call,” the man said according to the paper.
Police records show he tried to bribe the policemen in order to avoid being apprehended, however the defendant denied these allegations and said he only agreed to pay a fine.
Property and finance hub Dubai is part of the seven-member United Arab Emirates, but has a diverse culture as expatriates comprise an estimated 80 percent of the population. |
