Ironically coinciding with International Women’s Day, one of the founding members of Australia’s wing of the ‘Overseas Friends of BJP’, Balesh Dhankhar, has been sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment on charges of “elaborately executed, manipulative and highly predatory” rapes of five Korean women.
The 43-year-old faces 13 charges of rape, recording 17 intimate videos without consent, indecenrt assault and administrating six of his victims with an intoxicating substance for the intent to rape. In total, he is charged with 39 offences committed between January and October 2018.
In April 2023, a Sydney jury found him “guilty” of all of the 39 charges.
Dhankar’s modus operandi involved luring his victims with a fake job prospect for non-existent Korean-to-English translation work at Sydney’s Hilton Hotel bar. The bar is located near his apartment.
Dhankar would drug the women and proceed to rape. He would record the act while the victim was unconscious or semiconscious. All the women are aged between 21 and 27.
However, the ex-OFBJP Australia chief has denied the charges against him, saying there was a “difference in how I interpret consent, to how the law sees consent.”
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.”
Dhankar’s association with BJP
As mentioned earlier, Dhankar is one of the founding members of Australia’s wing of the ‘Overseas Friends of BJP’. He is believed to be close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to Australian media 9news.
“Until his arrest in 2018, Dhankhar was highly regarded among the Indian-Australian community, founding a satellite group of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party and acting as a spokesman for the Hindu Council of Australia,” 9news reported.
However, when his rape and sexual assault crimes came to light in 2018, Dhankar reportedly resigned, the organisation had tweeted.
He arrived in Australia as a student in 2006. Dhankhar will be aged 83 when his full sentence of 40 years ends.
(With PTI inputs)
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