Indian Origin Man Sentenced To 40-Year Prison For Raping 5 Women In Australia

A court in Australian on Friday sent an Indian-origin man to 40 years in jail after being found guilty of “premeditated and elaborately executed” rapes of five Korean women. The accused, 43-year-old Balesh Dhankhar, was awarded a non-parole period of 30 years during his sentencing at the Downing Centre District Court. A jury in 2023 found him guilty of 39 offences, including 13 counts of sexual assault.

Balesh landed in Australia as a student in 2006 and was a community leader, a former IT consultant and was also the former chief of the Overseas Friends of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Balesh as a data visualisation consultant has worked with firms like ABC, British American Tobacco, Toyota. Balesh used fake job advertisements to lure South Korean women aged between 21 and 27 and then drugged them in or near his Sydney home and  raped the women.

District Court Judge Michael King said this was an egregious sequence of planned predatory conduct against five unrelated young and vulnerable women over a significant period.

Evidence presented in court  revealed that Dhankar videographed his assaults to blackmail and get future sexual gratification from the victims. Dhankhar has denied drugging the women or that sex was non-consensual, stating that there was a “difference in how I interpret consent, to how the law sees consent.