Abu Dhabi: A 56-year-old Indian expat, partially paralyzed, indebted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has no one to help him, except for a Pakistani friend, who assists him in getting around, local media reported on Tuesday.
Mohammed Abdul Waheed Khan from Hyderabad, India after living and working in the United States for 21 years moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2014 with the hope of launching his own hotel company.
“I went to the US when I was 19. I moved to the UAE because I wanted to live and do business in a Muslim country,” Khan told Khaleej Times.
After being cheated by his former business partners, Khan’s dreams can’t take off and his health deteriorates. In addition to waging a number of legal battles, he suffers from advanced renal failure, secondary to long-term high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
Due to partial paralysis of the lower extremities, the immigrant now uses a wheelchair. His family is currently stranded in India, and Khan lives in a hotel apartment in Bur Dubai that is paid by his friends and family.
A former Wells Fargo bank employee in California’s San Fernando Valley, Khan is a green card holder and his three children are US citizens.
“I have no one to help me here. The only person taking care of me is my Pakistani friend Mohammed Mahmoud who runs a textile shop in Meena Bazaar in Bur Dubai. I am at his mercy. I need help to even stand up after using the bathroom, and he has been helping me through all this,” said Khan.
Khan had partnered with another citizen businessman and concluded a lease agreement to open a hotel in Deira. “We have a restaurant and catering service back home in India. I figured I would launch a similar business here. I signed a contract with two partners, got a three-year lease and issued 12 cheques for 800,000 dirhams (Rs 1,62,46,904) each,” Khaleej Times quoted Khan.
After a while, Khan found out that his Indian partner was jailed for separate legal issues he was facing. Khan never heard from him after that. The rental amount for the first three months was supposed to be paid by his partner.
“The property was never officially handed over to me, and I could never launch it. However, the third partner deposited the cheques I had given, either way, causing them to bounce, and I’ve been in legal trouble ever since.”
Khan’s legal representative Malik Shahzad, a legal advisor and managing director with Ahmed Al Husseini advocates and legal consultants, told Khaleej Times, “We’ve been representing Khan for a year and a half now. He had to stop services with us because he could no longer afford them. However, I met him a few months ago and I saw the condition he was in, and we decided to help him for free.”
According to Shahzad, Khan was deceived by many people with whom he was dealing, which led to his current situation.
According to his medical records, a copy of which was seen by the Khaleej Times, Khan’s kidneys failed in November last year, causing him to undergo dialysis twice a week.
“I don’t have medical insurance. For the past two months, Dar Al Ber has been kindly paying for my medical treatment. All the other costs have to be borne by me, and I can’t afford,” said Khan.
Khan wants to go back home to his family, but he cannot do that because he have to pay outstanding legal fines amounting to Dh48,000 (Rs 9,74,590) at least. “I cannot afford the medical bills here any longer,” he appealed.