A Nepalese pervert who committed sex offences against four women on Sydney trains over the course of two decades has been spared jail.
Dinesh Raj Upreti, 49, who is married with children and worked for the NSW Government, preyed on his first victim in November 2006, attacked his second in October 2007, and then struck again on February 3 and March 3 last year.
During the first attack he got on a peak-hour train at Sydenham Station, pressed himself behind a 31-year-old woman, and rubbed himself against her. The woman felt wetness on her trousers and went to police, who took a DNA sample from semen found on her clothing.
The following year Upreti squeezed himself onto a packed train at Central Station despite other passengers telling him there was no room, pressed himself into a 25-year-old woman, and moved with her when she tried to move away, “rubbing against her with purpose”, The Daily Telegraph reported.
She discovered semen on her clothing when she got off at Town Hall Station, and police seized more DNA evidence.
18 years later Upreti rubbed himself against the buttocks of two more women, but was arrested and charged over the final incident when police released a CCTV image of him as part of an appeal to track down 14 public transport offenders.
Investigators then matched his DNA to the February attack and those in 2006 and 2007.
Upreti pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual touching without consent, and faced the NSW Local Court last week, where Judge John Sfinas rejected his claims that he committed the offences due to the “financial pressure” of having to support his family in Nepal.
“I struggle to see how financial stress in any nature would be an underlying causal factor causing a man to press himself up against vulnerable women on public transport,” the judge told Upreti.
“What you did on those four separate occasions was disgusting, despicable and repugnant. How would you feel if it was your wife who experienced that kind of offending?”
Judge Sfinas said it was clear Upreti acted for his “own sexual deviant pleasure”, and said women were “entitled to board public transport and feel safe, and to be defiled in such a way is beyond repugnant”.
Upreti then broke down in tears as he was sentenced to a three-year intensive corrections order with 350 hours community service, while all four of his victims watched from the back of the courtroom.
The court heard Upreti lost his public servant job after he was charged.
Header image: The photo that let to Upreti’s arrest (NSW Police).
