An Indian electrician raped an elderly woman after installing solar panels at her Sydney home and telling her his wife never had sex with him.
Amol Vijay Dhumal, 45, was sentenced to five years’ jail by NSW District Court Judge Craig Everson SC last week after being found guilty of sexual intercourse without consent by a jury in September, and will be eligible for parole in April 2030.
He has since lodged an appeal but will remain behind bars until his appeal is determined, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The court heard Dhumal was sent to his victim’s home in Mount Colah on April 22, 2024, to install solar panels along with two other subcontractors, and asked the woman “who live with you?” at the end of the day, to which she replied that she lived alone.
Dhumal then grabbed her in a bear hug and tried to kiss her after telling her she reminded him of his mother, but she told him to leave.
He left with his colleague, but returned two days later to fix a power issue. Dhumal then told his victim that his wife never had sex with him, grabbed her and tried to drag her into the bedroom.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” the woman said, but Dhumal raped her in the lounge room and left her injured.
“I’m satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Dhumal asked those questions to ascertain the extent to which he would be detected raping the victim in the minutes that followed,” Judge Everson said.
After the attack Dhumal claimed that his victim was lying and had made up the rape because he didn’t answer a phone call, the court heard.
Judge Everson found Dhumal was remorseless, and said the suggestion that he posed no risk of re-offending was “ludicrous”.
“The fact that he denies the offence and shows no remorse suggests to me that he is at risk of reoffending, at the very least because he’s not able to grasp what properly involves consent,” he said.
The woman, who was too traumatised to attend court for Dhumal’s sentencing, said in a victim impact statement that she had always supported multiculturalism in her community and done volunteer work, but had now “withdrawn from it all” and was “not living, but only existing” since the attack.
“This is the most torturous tragedy of my life … I’m in prison in my own home,” she said in the statement, and described him as “that very evil person who has a very evil mind, evil heart, an evil and filthy mouth”.
“This home is supposed to give me the security, peace and lasting good memories but now it is a horror tragic place to live,” she wrote.
“I now bolt all the windows and doors and feel so alarmed that out there someone knows I live alone – and will just come in again and harm me.”
Dhumal’s wife Gauri, who he asked to write letters of support to the court despite his comments before the rape, appeared at the sentencing hearing where she told the court “my husband is loving and respectful” but said she did not want to talk about the case.
Header image: Downing Centre District Court (J Bar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons – cropped)
