Over the course of their three-month marriage in 2015, Rajinder Gupta
repeatedly raped his wife, telling her to “just let the pain happen,” a
court found Thursday.
Superior Court Justice James Diamond found Gupta guilty of four counts of
sexual assault and one count of assault.
Rajinder Gupta claimed he and his wife had consensual sex. (Steve
Russell / Toronto Star file photo)
is parents, Sheela and Vinod Gupta, were both convicted of uttering death
threats.
According to the decision, the
complainant testified Sheela told her she “should be killed” for not
making her son happy and that “these types of daughter-in-laws should be
killed” after a news story about a woman killed in India came on the
television.
The complainant and her father testified Vinod said he would hang them
and cut them to pieces during a bizarre dispute about living arrangements.
Sheela was also convicted of assault for slapping the complainant after the
complainant made a phone call to her sister-in-law asking her to take her
away from the Toronto home because of how she was being treated.
Although Diamond said he did not believe Gupta’s evidence, finding him to be
“dismissive, nonchalant, aloof, arrogant and not genuine” with little interest
in his wife and a “disconcerting and bordering on unsettling” lack of knowledge
of her health challenges during their marriage, Diamond acquitted Gupta on six
other counts of sexual assault and one count of assault, as well as one count of
uttering a threat to cause death.
Diamond found the complainant, whose identity is under a publication ban, to
be a credible witness and accepted her characterization of her marriage “as
being controlled and dominated by (Gupta) and his parents.”
But while she
“obviously (was) not expected to testify as if she kept a diary of every
event that occured in her three-month marriage,” he said, she was not always
consistent or reliable in her description of some of the incidents that took
place over the three months, leaving him with reasonable doubt on those
charges.
The complainant testified with the assistance of a Punjabi interpreter,
as did Rajinder and Sheela Gupta. Two Punjabi interpreters also translated
Thursday’s verdict to the Guptas. A sentencing hearing is set for December.
Diamond specifically rejected an attempt by Gupta’s lawyer George
Tsimiklis
to portray the complainant as someone “motivated to leave her marriage
to (Gupta) ‘with honour’ by fabricating her evidence so that she would still
be looked as a ‘pure’ in her community.”
Diamond said no expert evidence was called on this point and both the
complainant and her father testified this was not the case. He found the
complainant held off reporting the sexual assaults for months in the hope
that things would change.
Diamond also rejected
the defence assertion that the complainant made up the
“non-consummation” of her first marriage to support her request for a
divorce — no evidence was presented and the issue was “clearly collateral,”
he said.
According to Diamond’s ruling, the complainant and Gupta had an arranged
marriage organized by their parents through the popular website shaadi.com.
The wedding took place on April 15, 2013. The complainant went to the police
on July 13, 2015.
The complainant moved into the Guptas’ home after the wedding and
eventually got a job at a factory, although she would have preferred a job
in the restaurant industry.
Gupta testified that he wanted his wife to work at a factory, rather than
a Tim Hortons, because she should have a job where “she has to work every
single day and not have it easy … working hard means a factory job.” He also
forbid her from wearing make-up to work because he did not “want her looking
attractive when she was at work.”
The complainant’s allegations of sexual assault start from the wedding
night. She testifed Gupta raped her twice. The second time, she said, she
told him it was even more painful than the first time and he responded:
“don’t worry … let it happen … let the pain happen.”
Gupta claimed they had consensual sex, and that the complainant made him
feel ashamed by commenting that he had a “tiny penis.” Diamond found Gupta’s
claim that the complainant was not satisfied with their marital sex life and
sought to leave the marriage as a result had “no air of reality.”
Diamond said he acquitted Gupta on the two counts of sexual assault from
the wedding night because the complainant gave conflicting testimony on
whether she had consensual sex with Gupta during the first two weeks of
their marriage — although she did testify she did not want to have sex with
Gupta “most of the time” and that “just to make him happy, I would say
okay.”
For their honeymoon, two weeks after the wedding, the couple took a day
trip to Niagara Falls where Diamond found that Gupta raped the complainant
at a hotel.
When they returned home, the complainant testified Gupta bit her breasts
hard enough to draw blood, and also bit her shoulder and thighs. Gupta was
also found guilty of sexual assault for this incident.
Several days later, the complainant testified when she refused to have
anal sex with Gupta, he told her he would “jump from the window” and die.
She testified that after he said that, she said “okay, if you want, you can
do it from the front side.”
Although Diamond acknowledged a decision to consent must be voluntary and
made without the influence of force, threats or fear, he acquitted Gupta of
sexual assault on this count due to concerns about the complainant’s
reliability.
Gupta was convicted on two counts of sexual assault, including one
incident where the complainant testified Gupta anally raped her and forced
her face into a pillow until she had trouble breathing. Diamond found the
complainant’s sincere and truthful testimony was enough to sufficiently
support a conviction on this count. On another night, Gupta raped the
complainant twice, telling her to “just let the pain happen.”
Gupta was also convicted of assault for grabbing the complainant by the
neck and telling her to get out of the home.
However, he was acquitted of uttering a threat to cause death. Diamond
found that Gupta telling the complainant during a fight that she could or
should jump from a bridge as they crossed one driving home did not
constitute an “actual threat to cause the complainant’s death.”
Alyshah Hasham is a Toronto-based reporter
covering crime and court. Follow her on Twitter:
@alysanmati
This is another example of the mad abuse of judicial discretion in Canadian
criminal courts where judges might as well toss a coin or consult a Ouija board
to figure out if one person is telling the truth or fabricating evidence.
This case is both. Justice James Diamond tossed his coin a few times during
this trial and found she said good enough for a guilty verdict while rejecting
her evidence on other charges.
Justice Diamond simply had nothing except a she said upon which to convict
Gupta.
One of the key causes of this sort of complaint is the "motive to fabricate"
and Justice Diamond simply rejected the those suggestions.
In a criminal trial its supposed to be beyond reasonable doubt and its
blatantly obvious that the evidence in this case was riddled in doubt.
There is no evidence to show that Gupta is not a rapist or one to threaten
death, he could have raped her, he could have done a lot of bad things, but so
could have the complainant.
This is a classic case where the gender of the complainant meant that the
result with this particular judge was a forgone conclusion.
Welcome to the injustice of Ontario's courts where any of the old
requirements for some sort of corroboration is a thing of the past.
This was yet another feminist judge making a political decision and its
unlikely to be overturned at the court of appeal of Ontario because that would
be politically incorrect.
