Legality of an action is determined by the law of the land where that action is carried out. In the place where it happened, nobody would have questioned even if this person had even been killed. Over there, some of the laws are too inhuman to be described, yet they are in place and they are held up with strong conviction.

I would think this man made a serious mistake by handing his number to people without their consent. The girls later told that they felt as if they had a very bad character as people kept on looking at them after the chit was handed to them.

Here in Qatar also I have seen harassment of women taking place. I saw one guy in a coffee shop the other day, he happens to be one of the employees there, he came and sat with one girl who was working at her computer, and asked her if he could have her number, the poor girl got so nervous, she started blushing, I was sitting at the next table and was able to down my anger as the harasser did not even stop and chased her right till the door, saying in his God-damned accent, "you are beautiful madam".

There is nothing wrong if someone is consentually accepting or giving out a phone number. Or for that matter, if someone talks to a stranger. However, it is never polite, in fact, criminal to assault someone's privacy like that.

The genuine course of action in this case would have been for the girls to give the number to police and let them do their work. However, in that culture, it is highly ignoble for a woman's name to be implicated in anything---whether good or bad--- related to the police.

I feel sorry for the pudding, that he had brought with him, for his paramour. On the phone, it was another man, who faked a feminine voice, and demanded of the man to bring rice pudding for her ( I mean him). The bowl that he was carrying the pudding in was the first casualty of the assault made upon him.

[By the way, I did not witness this scene, first hand, but was told and retold this story, which is the buzz of the village these days].