One of the worst serial rapists in Sydney’s recent history has been found guilty.
Balesh Dhankhar, a 43-year-old data expert, was convicted on Monday for raping five Korean women in his home after drugging them. He also recorded his assaults, acts that left members of the jury writhing as they examined the video evidence, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
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In 2018, Dhankhar methodically lured the women to fake job interviews at a luxury hotel before spiking their drinks and assaulting them in his studio apartment in the Sydney central business district, the court heard. Dhankhar filmed the rapes on his phone and a camera hidden in a bedside clock, videos that helped the jury return guilty verdicts on each of the 39 charges brought against him.
The five survivors said Dhankhar lured them to his apartment in similar ways: He invited the women to the Hilton hotel for a fake job interview and followed it up with dinner at a Korean restaurant. Then he would make an excuse to take them to his apartment, such as claiming that he needed to pick up his car keys so he could drive them home, before serving them spiked wine or ice-cream. Traces of sedatives were found in the blood and hair of two of the women, the District Court of New South Wales in Sydney was told. Dhankhar claimed the encounters were consensual and denied all charges.
A prominent member of the Indian diaspora in Australia, Dhankhar has been sharply criticised by his own community following his trial and conviction. “I feel ashamed to admit he belongs to my country,” Madhvi Mohindra, an Indian-Australian and president of the Haryanvi Association of Australia, told Tribune India on Tuesday.
Hailing from the northern Indian state of Haryana, Dhankhar is one of the founders of the Overseas Friends of BJP in Australia, which supports Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He met with senior BJP members such as former spokesperson Sambit Patra and was photographed meeting Modi when he came to power in 2014. In a Twitter statement last month, when Dhankhar went on trial, the Overseas Friends of BJP in Australia said Dhankhar had resigned from the outfit in July 2018. “We strongly condemn his actions and he must face full force of law,” the tweet said.
In 2014, Dhankhar was quoted by an Indian media outlet as saying that many Indians, including him, would return to the country to “contribute” to its progress.
He didn’t, though. Instead, in 2017 and 2018, he posted fake jobs for Korean-English speakers on the classified site Gumtree, the court was told. The prosecutors told the jury that Dhankhar has a “particular interest” in young Korean women and downloaded a lot of porn featuring such women. Some of the videos were of women who were unconscious or asleep, the court heard.
Dhankhar was arrested in October 2018, after a survivor woke up in the middle of sexual assault and went to the police. In a subsequent raid of his apartment, police found videos on Dhankhar’s laptop of him sexually assaulting women who were unconscious or were making “distressed sounds,” prosecutors said.
Dhankhar pleaded not guilty later that year, thus beginning a legal process that forced the five Korean women to recount their trauma in testimonies and be subjected to a brutal cross-examination in court.
While the video evidence created by Dhankhar himself was damning enough, the court also found that he kept records of his victims in a spreadsheet.
Police said the document includes indications that he had committed rape. One entry describes a woman he had dinner with as “super hot” but “got angry on base4, doesnt want to continue – close.” “base4” is code for sex.
Dhankhar cried on Monday when the jury read their “guilty” verdict on the charges against him, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. He was denied bail and is set to appear in court again in May, with sentencing expected later this year.
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