Indian community leader in Australia jailed for 40 years for sexually assaulting five women

An Indian community leader in Australia has been sentenced to 40 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 30 years, for the “premeditated and elaborately executed” rapes of five Korean women, according to a media report.

Balesh Dhankhar, 43, who hails from Rewari in Haryana, was sentenced in the Downing Centre District Court on Friday.

Dhankhar posted fake job advertisements to lure women before drugging them in or near his home in Sydney. The former IT consultant then groped and raped the women, the Australian Associated Press reported.

He also filmed his crimes for his future sexual gratification, the report said.

In jailing Dhankhar on Friday, district court judge Michael King said the offender’s conduct was “premeditated, elaborately executed, manipulative and highly predatory” and demonstrated his desire for sexual gratification came in complete and callous disregard for each victim, he said.

“This was an egregious sequence of planned predatory conduct against five unrelated young and vulnerable women over a significant period,” the report quoted the judge as saying.

All the women, aged between 21 and 27, were either unconscious or significantly impaired at the time of the abuse.

Dhankhar kept a sickening Excel spreadsheet in which he rated each applicant of his fake job advertisement based on looks and intelligence.

The spreadsheet also recorded his interactions with each victim, their details and his assessment of their vulnerability and suitability for his plans.

Until his arrest in 2018, Dhankhar was highly regarded among the Indian-Australian community, founding a satellite group of the Bharatiya Janata Party and acting as a spokesman for the Hindu Council of Australia, the report said.

Dhankhar also worked as a data visualisation consultant with ABC, British American Tobacco, Toyota and Sydney Trains.

He arrived in Australia on a student visa in 2004.

His presentation as a community-minded individual concerned with and active in improving the quality of life for others was “entirely inconsistent with his seriously flawed and predatory character” revealed in court, the judge said.

After preying on his fifth victim in October 2018, police raided his Sydney central business district unit and found date-rape drugs and a video recorder disguised as a clock radio.

A jury in 2023 found him guilty of 39 offences, including 13 counts of sexual assault.

Dhankhar denies drugging the women or that sex was non-consensual, telling a report writer there was a “difference in how I interpret consent, to how the law sees consent”.

His non-parole period expires in April 2053, backdated to the end of his trial.

When Dhankhar’s 40-year sentence ends, he will be 83.

Dhankhar’s family reacts to conviction

Balesh Dhankhar’s family expressed deep grief upon learning of his 40-year conviction. His father, Ajit Dhankar, is a retired Indian Air Force officer who also worked as a deputy superintendent in the Delhi government. His mother is a homemaker. He completed his schooling at Kendriya Vidyalaya Rewari and earned a B.Tech in Gurugram before moving to Australia. His brother, employed in an automobile company, suspects jealousy over Balesh’s political rise led to a conspiracy that trapped him. Dhankhar’s wife and daughter returned to India in September 2023 and now live with the family, who also runs a playschool in Rewari.