Fourth in 2 weeks: Female bank employee assaulted with knife

Muscat: A citizen was arrested for assaulting a female employee with a knife while performing her work in a local bank in Dhofar Governorate.

She is in stable condition, and legal procedures are being completed against him.

Sunday's incident is the fourth such case to be reported in the past two weeks.

On Saturday (December 17), a woman was arrested in Shinas in North Batinah after she assaulted her father with a knife and self-harmed due to family disputes, which led to multiple injuries.

The victim was transferred to the hospital in stable condition, while legal procedures are completed against the accused, the ROP said.

Recently, a young Omani woman was stabbed to death by a citizen in Ibri, Al Dhahirah Governorate, which was the second such incident in less than a week.

While Royal Oman Police confirmed the suspect’s arrest, it did not reveal the details or the possible motive behind the incident.

In the first incident of this kind, a citizen was arrested on charges of assaulting a woman with a white weapon in the Wilayat of Al Seeb because of a family dispute between them.

Speaking to the Observer, Dr. Hamed al Sinawi, a consultant psychiatrist at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, said, “Crime is a complex behavior that is often caused by social, psychological, and political factors. “Some people jump to the assumption that people who commit crimes have some form of a mental illness which is not always the case.”

Al Sinawi said, “Several international studies have been conducted on this matter and as per one study, up to 80 percent of people who have committed the crime have reported no mental illness.” If we analyze motives behind committing such crimes in general, reasons can be related to stress, jealousy, and general feelings of frustration, he said. He added, “We should not analyze the incident without having details, but as per social media reports, the victims and the perpetrators of the Crime were connected. The killing was either planned or pre-meditated, possibly under the influence of extreme anger.” The fact that incidents took place in the presence of others in broad daylight might suggest the accused had poor impulse control or was unable to control anger which led to the killings. “This does not necessarily mean that the perpetrators of the crime were suffering from any kind of mental illness.”