{"id":414807,"date":"2026-05-06T16:26:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/414807\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T16:26:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:26:21","slug":"auckland-bus-driver-found-guilty-of-trapping-student-on-bus-indecently-assaulting-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/414807\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland bus driver found guilty of trapping student on bus, indecently assaulting her"},"content":{"rendered":"

First published on \"NZ<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Bus<\/p>\n

\nFile pic
\nPhoto: Stuff \/ Ricky Wilson\n<\/p>\n

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, 46, kissed it before rubbing the woman’s breast – an act for which he was charged with indecent assault.<\/p>\n

Kumar denied the charge in a judge-alone trial in the Waitakere District Court on Tuesday, claiming he had grabbed the victim’s wrist because he thought she stole something.<\/p>\n

But Judge Terry Singh ruled the charge was proven as he found the victim’s story was “consistent” with the bus’s CCTV footage, while Kumar’s evidence was “self-serving”.<\/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 “always did” – said “hi” to the driver, tagged on with her Auckland Transport card 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 “personal things”.<\/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 “strangeness” with the conversation as New Zealanders were “very friendly”.<\/p>\n

But, when they reached her stop, Kumar did not open the doors.<\/p>\n

The victim said he asked, “Please let me hug you” but she responded she couldn’t because she had a boyfriend.<\/p>\n

She told the court she felt “quite bad” because this was a “tough situation”.<\/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 “very scared”, she felt she might “be killed” 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

“Rather than saying he touched my breast, it would rather be he rubbed repeatedly on my breast,” 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 “loud” noise of something falling on the floor.<\/p>\n

He saw the victim move to pick it up before approaching him.<\/p>\n

“I was not feeling comfortable because she was standing on the left side of my seat … moving between me and the left side,” 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 “falling out” 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’s 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’s headphones were “stolen property”.<\/p>\n

“[There was] no one else on the bus who could have dropped the item, isn’t that correct?” she said.<\/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’s ride, when the footage appeared to darken, he claimed the lights were still on.<\/p>\n

Kumar’s employer”s testimony<\/p>\n

Pavlovich Coachlines operations manager Andre Dreyer, Kumar’s 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 Fiji because 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’s police complaint, he viewed the bus’s CCTV footage.<\/p>\n

He could see from the footage an action that looked like Kumar kissing the victim’s 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’s 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

“We made it very clear that he is not to physically touch passengers.”<\/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 “inappropriate” to comment further on this case as it was a “judicial” matter.<\/p>\n

‘Telling evidence’<\/p>\n

Judge Singh said it was “telling” when Kumar would not admit the lights switched off.<\/p>\n

The judge “took the view” that Kumar had turned off the lights “deliberately” 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 “reluctantly consented” to having her hand kissed.<\/p>\n

He found the charge proved, but Kumar’s 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

* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First published on File pic Photo: Stuff \/ Ricky Wilson A bus driver shut off the indoor lights…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":["post-414807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414807","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=414807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}