Who Is Balesh Dhankhar, Indian-Origin Man Jailed 40 Years For Raping 5 Women In Australia
Sydney, Australia: Balesh Dhankhar, an Indian community leader in Australia, will be on a non-parole imprisonment till he turns 83 in 2053 in Australia for tricking and rapping five Korean women.
A Sydney court on Friday sentenced the 43-year-old man to 40 years in prison for raping the young South Korean women, calling the act ‘premeditated, manipulative and elaborately executed’, which the accused carried out in a shocking and systematic manner.
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Dhankhar, the founder of the Australian wing of the Overseas Friends of BJP, an official support group of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the country, arrived in Australia as a student in 2006 worked in many firms. The Indian origin man was reportedly one of the key organizers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reception in Sydney in 2014.
The dark reality behind the prominent figure in the Indian-Australian community unfolded, exposing the sickening and highly manipulative modus operandi of the convict. To commit the crimes, Dhankhar, a former IT consultant, resorted to shocking and bizarre ways.
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The court found Dhankhar guilty of 39 offences, including 13 counts of sexual assault, administering an intoxicating substance, recording intimate videos without consent, among others.
The culprit posted fake job advertisements for Korean-to-English translation work to lure women. Once they applied for the job, he gathered information about the applicants in an Excel spreadsheet and rated each one based on looks, intelligence, and vulnerabilities.
Dhankhar’s spreadsheet also recorded his interactions with each victim, their details, and his assessment of their vulnerability and suitability for his plans, apart from filming his crimes.
The court found that all the five Korean women he rapped were aged between 21 and 27, and were either unconscious or largely impaired at the time of the sexual assault. He had drugged them in or near his home or hotels before groping and sexually assaulting the victim. Police have also discovered incriminating video evidence of his crimes, as well as date-rape drugs and a hidden recording device at his home.
Notably, despite the evidence against his claims, Dhankhar has maintained that he did not drug the women and denied that the encounters were non-consensual. He says there is a difference in how he interprets consent, and how the law sees consent, reported Australian Associated Press.
While delivering the verdict, District Court Judge Michael King said he could find no comparable case in the state of New South Wales, noting that it was an egregious sequence of “planned predatory conduct against five unrelated young and vulnerable women over a significant period.”
After arriving in Australia, Dhankhar worked with organizations including ABC, British American Tobacco, Toyota and Sydney Trains. He also acted as a spokesperson for the Hindu Council of Australia. The Overseas Friends of BJP, which he founded, were reportedly at the forefront of organizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reception in Sydney in 2014. After Dhankhar’s arrest in 2018, the group had said that Dhankhar resigned in the same year.
Dhankhar completed his schooling at Kendriya Vidyalaya Rewari and earned a B.Tech in Gurugram before moving to Australia. His father, Ajit Dhankar, is a retired Indian Air Force officer who also worked as a deputy superintendent in the Delhi government. In 2023, the rape accused’s wife and daughter returned to India in September 2023 and now live with the family. The family has expressed grief over Dhankhar’s 40-year conviction.
