PTI 

DUBAI, Nov 22: An Indian carpenter, who has spent 21 years in jail on the charges of burning nine Pakistanis to death, is the longest serving prisoner in Dubai Central Jail here.

Paul George has been put on a death row, a media report said.

21 years ago, a drunken George set afire shanty houses in Fareej Al Marar here in which nine Pakistanis – two mothers and their seven children aged between two and 14 were killed.

George, who came to Dubai to work in his brother's furniture shop, describes his act as an accident. "I was heavily drunk, unconscious and unaware of what I was doing when I committed the crime".

"I then went back to my shop to do some work but some children came and disturbed me. I chased them and slapped one of them on the face. The father of that boy came along with other neighbours, humiliated me.

"That depressed me. So, I drank more alcohol until I collapsed and lost all senses and set fire to the garbage behind the shanties," 60-year-old George was quoted as saying in the Gulf News.

Now his son Subarajan, 24, is making efforts to get his father out of jail so that his father could spend the rest of his years with his mother.

"I approached the Indian consulate. They have promised to help. I met my father last year. He left me when I was only three and I barely remember his face," he said.