By Gurbir Singh:
Rajinder Paul Singh, a massage therapist of Auckland (New Zealand), was yesterday convicted by the Auckland District court and sentenced to four years imprisonment for “inappropriately touching” 14 women during massages.
It took the jury three days to come to an unanimous decision of guilty of 20 counts of indecent assault that included unwanted kissing, touching, etc during full body massages.
Most of the victims were completely naked or just in their underwear when they underwent message from Rajinder.
Rajinder’s wife sat alone in the front row with her eyes closed and hands clasped and on her lap, while he stood in the defendant’s box, wearing a brown suit and hair tied up in a small bun.
Rajinder was trained at Brandon Raynor’s Massage School in Auckland and was operating under the business name, Soothe Me Massage.
For at least half of the 21 charges, the accused out rightly denied any such thing ever happened, but in some of the charges, his defence lawyer claimed any inappropriate touching was purely accidental and should be expected as part of a full body massage.
The first complaint was made by a victim against Rajinder in 2012. He was then questioned by police but let off with a warning when he reportedly assured he will stop this massage business.
The 13 other victims were allegedly assaulted in 2017 and had bought discount vouchers for the massage on New Zealand’s popular website, GrabOne where he had advertised his business.
The massage industry in New Zealand is not regulated like other health professions and anyone can practice massage.
Rajinder was also reportedly running a tutoring business and a nail salon at Auckland.
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This was earlier also published by this journalist in Jan 2018 in PressReader.com
– from NewsViews
