An Australian court on Monday held an Indian-origin man guilty of sexually assaulting five Korean women after drugging them, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The man, 43-year-old Balesh Dhankhar, is a former chief of the Overseas Friends of BJP in Australia, an official support group of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the country.
On Monday, a district court jury in Sydney’s Downing Centre found Dhankhar guilty of sexual assault, making intimate recordings without consent, using intoxicating substances to commit indictable offences and assault with an act of indecency. He will be sentenced later this year.
The case was lodged after the police raided his apartment in October 2018 and found videos of him having sexual intercourse with the Korean women. The videos were reportedly sorted in separate folders with the women’s names.
According to the prosecution, Dhankhar had posted a fake job advertisement for Korean translators in 2017. He would then meet the women job aspirants at the Hilton Hotel bar, which was close to his apartment, according to Indian Link.
The accused man would then make an excuse to go up to his apartment – either promising the women a view of the Opera House or claiming that he needed his car keys.
Dhankhar then gave the women wine or ice cream laced with sedatives and sexually assaulted them while they were unconscious, the prosecution said. He recorded his sexual acts on his phone and on a camera hidden in his bedside alarm clock.
Dhankhar had pleaded not guilty to the charges after which the case went to trial. During the trial, jury members had to watch recordings of the sexual assault, and on one hearing, they reportedly had to be sent home early as they were traumatised after watching the videos, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
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