Balesh Dhankhar jury sent home early after watching videos in Sydney serial ... trends now
Jurors were sent home early after they pleaded with a judge for a break in watching sex tapes an accused serial rapist secretly recorded of his conquests.
Balesh Dhankhar is accused of luring five young Korean women with a fake job ad before drugging and raping them in his Sydney CBD flat.
The former ABC contractor allegedly recorded the rapes either on his mobile phone or a camera hidden in a clock facing his bed.
Prosecutors on Tuesday showed the NSW District Court jury other videos of Dhankhar engaged in consensual sex with numerous different Korean women.
Lead prosecutor Kate Nightingale played the videos, which were allegedly secretly recorded, to show the defendant had a tendency of filming without permission.
Balesh Dhankhar is accused of luring five young Korean women with a fake job ad before drugging and raping them on camera hidden in a clock .
Police allegedly discovered 47 videos of Dhankhar having sex with Korean women on his computer, catalogued under their names.
But after hours of watching the sex tapes, the jury sent a note to Judge Michael King asking to wrap up the day early due to the 'nature' of the videos.
Lawyers for both parties, who were never keen on watching the videos themselves, agreed the jury had seen enough and ended proceedings not long after 3pm.
Dhankhar, as he did for the entire trial so far, sat completely emotionless as the videos were played, mostly staring at his laptop.
The jury on Wednesday had to watch even more disturbing videos of Dhankhar allegedly raping an unconscious victim, but there were mercifully few of them.
Dhankhar is on trial for 39 charges including 13 counts of rape allegedly committed between January and October 2018.
The jury heard he had a 'very specific modus operandi' to ensnare the women - using the same hotel, café, and Korean restaurant in almost all the rapes.
Prosecutors alleged he spiked glasses of wine and other drinks with tablets of the sleeping drug Stilnox or infamous date-rape drug rohypnol.
When they were unconscious, he allegedly raped them multiple times at his studio apartment in the World Square complex in the Sydney CBD.
Dhankhar allegedly recorded the rapes on a camera hidden in a clock he bought on eBay, or on his mobile phone, which were recovered by police.
A detailed spreadsheet discovered by police allegedly kept coded notes about each of his victims, with a column labelled 'action' describing how far the sexual activity went - those he is accused of raping were at 'fourth base'.
A jury heard he had a 'very specific modus operandi' to ensnare and rape the women - using the same hotel, café, and Korean restaurant in almost all the rapes
He was arrested on October 21, 2018, after the fifth woman allegedly woke up while he was raping her, and sent messages to a friend while hiding in the bathroom.
Dhankhar pleaded not guilty, claiming all five women consented to sex, and to being filmed, and is in the middle of a lengthy trial in the NSW District Court.
He has spent the past more than four years fighting the charges, unsuccessfully trying to have his name suppressed.
The 'lead data visualisation consultant' worked for Sydney Trains during all the alleged rapes, and was hired by Pfizer and the ABC for one-year contracts while on bail in 2019 to 2021.
He is a prominent member of Australia's Indian community, being the founding president of the OFBJP - an Australian support group for India's ruling party.
The fourth of his alleged victims bravely told her story in court on Wednesday, claiming she woke up naked on his bed while she was being raped.
'He kept doing it when I woke up and I said can you stop, I thought we were just friends,' she told the court.
'I remember I started to cry and told him I wanted to go home… he was trying to soothe me down "it's OK, don't cry, you're OK…"'
The court heard Dhankhar created a fake company called The Asia Partnership, named after a real firm he used to work for - but without their knowledge.
He posted job ads on Gumtree for a Korean to English translator in late 2017 and through 2018 to lure in the women, all aged in their mid-20s.
The woman, who can't be named, responded to the ad a day after arriving in Australia on October 8, 2018, and met Dhankhar at the Hilton three days later.
She said he asked her to dinner and she declined, but met up with him at a café the next day, where he gave her a document to translate.
This time she accepted his dinner invitation and they went to Koibito, a Korean restaurant nearby, and split one or two bottles of soju.
The woman said she felt fine after the restaurant and back in Korea she regularly drank with her friends where she could down three bottles by herself and only feel tipsy.
Dhankhar offered her a lift home from Koibito but claimed he needed to get his car keys from his flat, and offered her red wine when they arrived.
They sat on his coach sipping the wines and watching Korean music videos, then he taught her salsa dancing. That was the last thing she remembered.
'I don't remember after that… dancing is the last thing I remember. I felt fine, but suddenly I don't remember anything, like I blacked out,' she told the court.
'It was very weird. When you're drunk or sick you would [start] to feel uncomfortable. I was fine, then I remember nothing.'
Dhankhar allegedly recorded the rapes on a camera hidden in a clock he bought on eBay, or on his mobile phone, which were recovered by police.
After waking up to allegedly being raped, the woman said she only had flashes of memory - of being in the building's car park and the ride home - but not of how she got there or putting her clothes back on.
'I felt like something isn't OK, something isn't right, I was trying to behave normally as I didn't want to get in trouble any more… but my body wasn't ready to be normal,' she told the court.
She vomited immediately after arriving at the hostel in the early hours of the morning and again later on, then was too sick to move the next day.
Dhankhar texted her after 4am wishing her good night and saying she should have slept over at his flat.
'I was ashamed, I was trying to figure it out,' she told the court.
'I was thinking maybe I was drunk or maybe he put something in my wine, I was trying to guess how it could happen.'
The woman and Dhankhar exchanged numerous text messages in following days while she tried to work out what happened.
She told him she was in an 'unnormal state' that night and she wasn't sure if he noticed it.
'I don't understand why we did that… first time we can call it accident, that's it. I don't want to make second time,' she wrote.
Dhankhar claimed the 'both
