An Indian Uber driver has been jailed for violently raping a teenage passenger after denying the attack at trial and saying New Zealand women were “forward and promiscuous”.
Satwinder Singh, 37, faced Hamilton District Court for sentencing on Wednesday where his defence lawyer Nadine Baier argued her client should be given a “hardship discount” because he would find jail difficult as a Sikh who had lived in a mainly Indian community since arriving in the country 11 years earlier.
“He, as you will see, is a follower of the Sikh religion, so prison would place a hardship on him as opposed to someone who was born and raised in New Zealand,” she told the court.
But Judge Tini Clarke rejected the defence argument, and sentencing Singh to seven years and two months’ jail, after noting he had a “level of distorted thinking about how New Zealand women behave” due to his upbringing, the NZ Herald reported.
She earlier found Singh guilty of three indecent assault charges and one rape charge over the February 2023 attack in central Hamilton, where he asked her if she was wearing underwear, groped her thigh, turned off his GPS and drove his 17-year-old victim down a side street.
He then locked the doors, put the woman’s seat in recline and raped her – which she described as “very rough and very hurtful” – and then dropped her off at her destination where she immediately called police.
Singh then denied wrongdoing, and tried to argue simultaneously at trial that the rape never happened, that he rejected his victim’s advances, and that the sexual activity was consensual.
Judge Tini found that Singh was “trying to lie his way out of it”, which added to the impact on the victim, who said the attack left her feeling like the outside world was “unsafe and threatening”.
She also said she now had an “overwhelming rage inside of her” that was made worse by having to go through the trial.
“The victim should now be poised to leave home, attend university, and instead, what I have read about is that she simply cannot do so because this event has made her feel like a completely different person,” the judge said.
But Singh successfully managed to prevent local media from publishing his image after telling the court that a close relative had mental health problems.
Header image: Hamilton District Court (Google Maps).
