PESHAWAR, June 19: The wife of a Pakistani doctor undergoing a 20-year prison term in the United Arab Emirates has requested the presidents of the UAE and Pakistan to help her family.

Doctor Fazle Khaliq and his brother Fazal Wahab, a medical technician, were arrested by the health authorities in Abu Dhabi on May 18, 2001, on charges of selling sedatives without prescription in their pharmacy.

A court in the UAE sentenced both of them to 20-year imprisonment.

Neelam Khaliq, wife of Dr Khaliq, remained in the UAE with her children for about two years after the arrest of her husband.

She looked after the case of her husband and brother-in-law and had to sell the pharmacy, her vehicle and other valuables.

She returned to Pakistan when she was left with money but now she was finding it difficult to earn livelihood for her five children, mother and an unemployed brother, she said.

“My only hope now is that the UAE president can forgive my husband and brother-in-law so that they can look after the family,” she said.

She said her husband had opened the Adil Pharmacy on Marwa Road in Abu Dhabi.

“On the day of occurrence, my husband was not present at the pharmacy and Fazal Wahab, who was not well-trained, sold a medicine to a customer without prescription,” Ms Khaliq said, adding: “The said customer was an official of the health department.”

She said the Pakistani embassy in the UAE helped them in the case but the court found both of them guilty and sentenced them.

She said she lived with her mother and brother at Pabbi village in Nowshera district. “I serve as a lady health worker but the nominal income is not enough for the family. I have two sons and three daughters, one of whom is handicapped,” she said.

She said her husband and brother-in-law had spent more than four years in prison and appealed that the authorities in the UAE release them on humanitarian grounds.