An Australian court has ordered the deportation of a Punjabi taxi driver after convicting him for indecently assaulting a woman passenger four years ago, a media report said.
Jaswinder Singh Mutta, 27, has been accused of raping a 26-year-old woman passenger late at night in his taxi in North Fitzroy in Melbourne in January 2010.
Mutta pleaded guilty before the county court to indecently assaulting the woman. The judge sentenced Mutta to the time he has already served, plus one day so that deportation arrangements could be made, the Herald Sun reported.
“This is a terribly tragic affair that has seen the lives of two obviously promising young people wrecked up to this point,” the judge said.
The defence counsel said the devout Sikh had spent six months in “extremely arduous” circumstances in Indian custody and had been in restrictive protective custody for the past 19 months due to severe racial abuse received from other prisoners.
Mutta fled to India after being questioned by the police in 2010 in connection with the rape. He was extradited from India in January 2012, following his arrest by Indian police.