A bus driver shut off the indoor lights of his bus late one night, refused to open the doors and asked a lone passenger if he could kiss her hand.<\/p>\n
Fearing for her life the woman, who was an international student, offered up her hand.<\/p>\n
Driver Kartik Kamiesh Kumar kissed it before rubbing the 46-year-old woman\u2019s breast – an act for which he was charged with\u00a0indecent assault.<\/p>\n
Kumar denied the charge in a judge-alone trial in the\u00a0Waitakere District Court\u00a0yesterday, claiming he had grabbed the victim\u2019s wrist because he thought she stole something.<\/p>\n
But Judge Terry Singh ruled the charge was proven as he found the victim\u2019s story was \u201cconsistent\u201d with the bus\u2019s CCTV footage, while Kumar\u2019s evidence was \u201cself-serving\u201d.<\/p>\n
An international student boards a bus<\/p>\n
The victim appeared via audio visual link from her home country and was assisted by a translator who was present in court.<\/p>\n
She said last year she was a student at an English language school in the Auckland CBD.<\/p>\n
She would catch two buses to and from the school and her home in West Auckland.<\/p>\n
On February 12 of last year, she finished school at 9.30pm and began her journey home.<\/p>\n
She stepped on to her second bus around 10.10pm and did what she \u201calways did\u201d – said \u201chi\u201d to the driver, tagged on with her\u00a0Auckland Transport\u00a0card and sat down.<\/p>\n
She was listening to music on her wireless headphones until she noticed the driver was trying to say something to her.<\/p>\n
Thinking she might have forgotten to tag on, she stood up to talk to the driver and in the process dropped her headphones.<\/p>\n
She bent down to pick them up, went to talk to Kumar, and was surprised to learn he wanted to talk about \u201cpersonal things\u201d.<\/p>\n
He asked her how old she was, where she came from and why she was riding on the bus.<\/p>\n
The victim said she had been in New Zealand for a few months and did not feel any \u201cstrangeness\u201d with the conversation as New Zealanders were \u201cvery friendly\u201d.<\/p>\n
But, when they reached her stop, Kumar did not open the doors.<\/p>\n
The victim said he asked, \u201cPlease let me hug you\u201d but she responded she couldn\u2019t because she had a boyfriend.<\/p>\n
She told the court she felt \u201cquite bad\u201d because this was a \u201ctough situation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then, Kumar asked her if he could kiss her hand.<\/p>\n
The victim wanted to refuse but, alone with Kumar on the bus, and \u201cvery scared\u201d, she felt she might \u201cbe killed\u201d if she said no.<\/p>\n
She reluctantly held out her hand and he kissed it.<\/p>\n
The court viewed dark, black and white CCTV footage from the bus, which showed the moment where she appeared to lift her arm.<\/p>\n
When asked by police prosecutor Jazween Mala what happened next, the victim held a tissue up to her face and began to cry.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than saying he touched my breast, it would rather be he\u00a0rubbed\u00a0repeatedly on my breast,\u201d the victim told the court.<\/p>\n
This lasted for about three seconds, she said, before the doors opened, she fled the bus, called her boyfriend and, around midnight, filed a police report.<\/p>\n
The defendant takes the stand<\/p>\n
Kumar took the stand, assisted by a Hindi translator, and told the court he had been driving buses for 13 years.<\/p>\n
He said after the victim boarded the bus, he heard a \u201cloud\u201d noise of something falling on the floor.<\/p>\n
He saw the victim move to pick it up before approaching him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not feeling comfortable because she was standing on the left side of my seat … moving between me and the left side,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
She had her headphones in a case in her hand, and he accused her of taking property left on the bus for herself.<\/p>\n
This is when he said he first grabbed her wrist.<\/p>\n
Then, he said she started threatening to press the emergency exit button which would open the doors.<\/p>\n
He said he again held her wrist to stop her from pressing the button and \u201cfalling out\u201d of a moving vehicle.<\/p>\n
He said she was frustrated and yelling and, when she left the bus, told him she was going to make a complaint.<\/p>\n
Lights on, lights off<\/p>\n
While cross-examining Kumar, Mala pointed out that he was in sole control of the bus\u2019s lights and opening the doors.<\/p>\n
Apart from the emergency exit button, which could open doors, Kumar countered.<\/p>\n
She also poked holes in Kumar suspecting the victim\u2019s headphones were \u201cstolen property\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201c[There was] no one else on the bus who could have dropped the item, isn\u2019t that correct?\u201d she challenged.<\/p>\n
An earlier passenger could have left an item on the seat, which could have fallen from the chair while he was driving and alone with the victim, he replied.<\/p>\n
Kumar denied turning the lights off as the victim approached him.<\/p>\n
Mala replayed the bus CCTV, which had been professionally lightened by a photography studio.<\/p>\n
Kumar agreed that the lights were on, then, three minutes into the victim\u2019s ride, when the footage appeared to darken, he claimed the lights were still on.<\/p>\n
Kumar\u2019s employer<\/p>\n
Pavlovich Coachlines operations manager Andre Dreyer, Kumar\u2019s then boss, read his police statement from April 2025 to the court.<\/p>\n
It detailed that Kumar had worked for the company for 18 months and had been hired, with around 50 other drivers, from an agency in\u00a0Fiji\u00a0because of staff shortages.<\/p>\n
He never had any issues with Kumar and found him to be nice, quiet, and reliable.<\/p>\n
When he was made aware of the victim\u2019s police complaint, he viewed the bus\u2019s CCTV footage.<\/p>\n
He could see from the footage an action that looked like Kumar kissing the victim\u2019s hand and later touching her shoulder.<\/p>\n
When he asked Kumar if he remembered any incidents with passengers that week, the driver initially said no, and Dreyer showed him the CCTV footage.<\/p>\n
In an official meeting a few days later Kumar denied the victim\u2019s allegation and gave his explanation.<\/p>\n
Dreyer accepted his explanation and chose to educate him so he would not make these mistakes in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made it very clear that he is not to physically touch passengers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kumar returned to driving buses until he became unable to drive because of court conditions.<\/p>\n
A representative for Pavlovich Coachlines said it would be \u201cinappropriate\u201d to comment further on this case as it was a \u201cjudicial\u201d matter.<\/p>\n
\u2018Telling evidence\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Singh said it was \u201ctelling\u201d when Kumar would not admit the lights switched off.<\/p>\n
The judge \u201ctook the view\u201d that Kumar had turned off the lights \u201cdeliberately\u201d to obscure the indecent assault from the CCTV cameras.<\/p>\n
He said the victim made believable concessions, such as that she was groped for only three seconds and \u201creluctantly consented\u201d to having her hand kissed.<\/p>\n
He found the charge proved, but Kumar\u2019s lawyer, Angus Graham, asked that a conviction not be entered yet, as it would cause immigration issues for Kumar.<\/p>\n
The lawyer indicated he may make a bid for a discharge without conviction for his client and an appointment was made at the end of May to fix a discharge hearing or sentencing date.<\/p>\n
\u00a0– Ella Scott-Fleming, Open Justice reporter\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bus driver shut off the indoor lights of his bus late one night, refused to open the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-412718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}