New Delhi: A prominent member of the Indian community in Sydney, Balesh Dhankhar, has been found guilty of drugging and raping five Korean women in the city after luring them to a luxury hotel for fake job interviews in 2017.
A District Court jury in Sydney’s Downing Centre on Monday convicted the “politically connected predator”, after a years-long trial that saw the women face gruelling cross-examinations and the jury watching horrid recordings of those attacks.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Dhankhar sought suppression orders, guarded his privacy, removed his photographs from social media and even wore masks in public in the years leading up to the trial.
Dhankhar led the ‘Overseas Friends of the BJP’, an official group supporting the ruling party, a position that allowed him to rub shoulders with the most powerful in Sydney’s Indian diaspora,” the paper reported.
Photographs on his now-archived website show him meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the paper reported.
Dhankhar began his web of deception in 2017 when he put out a fake job ad for Korean translators.
He recorded conversations with the women, who were alone in Sydney and apparently desperate for work. The man interviewed the women in Sydney’s Hilton Hotel bar before pressuring them to dinner, which the women attended out of politeness, they told the court.
Dhankhar then took the women to his apartment, which was up the street from the hotel, promised them a great view of the Opera House, spiked their wine and raped them, the Sydney court heard.
During the trial, the Indian-origin man pleaded not guilty to dozens of charges comprising 13 sexual assaults, 17 intimate recordings without consent, six counts of using intoxicating substances to commit an indictable offence, and assault with an act of indecency.
The prosecutor had told the jury at the beginning of the trial that Dhankhar had a “particular interest” in young Korean women, and downloaded a lot of pornography featuring such women.
When police raided Dhankhar’s apartment in October 2018, they found dozens of videos of him having sex with women.
Sometimes the women were unconscious, and at other times some of them were struggling or groaning, the paper reported, adding the videos were sorted into folders, each labeled with a Korean woman’s name. He was apparently obsessed with Korean cinema, language and women.
Dhankhar recorded his sexual assaults using a camera hidden in his bedside alarm clock and on his phone. The jury, according to the paper, “writhed” as they watched the videos. “At one stage it became too much and they asked to be sent home early. Judge Michael King appeared sympathetic,” the paper said.
Dhankhar was asked about a meticulous call list of the people who responded to his online ad.
The spreadsheet included his victims, “whether he thought they were attractive, whether they had sex and how they reacted to being drugged and abused”.
He wrote next to one woman’s name — “Keeps cancelling meeting, very hot, keep trying.” Another he described as stupid and a good target.
Dhankhar’s wife, who was not in Sydney when he raped the women, supported her husband and was often in tears in court.
“The only time Dhankhar cried was while explaining he lied to women because he was lonely after an extra-marital affair broke down. He blamed his loneliness on the ‘unfulfilling’ intimacy of his marriage,” the paper described court scenes.
Dhankhar could have pleaded guilty in the past five years, and saved the women from testifying in detail, which could have earned him a discounted sentence. But his decision to contest – a legal battle he funded by selling assets – means he will be in prison for many years. Dhankhar, who was found guilty of each of the 39 charges against him, will be sentenced later this year.