Indian-origin men in New Zealand face gang-rape charges

Wellington, May 21 (IASNS) A woman has given evidence in a court in New Zealand implicating four men of Indian origin of raping her in turns in April 2011.

Amir Chand, 25, Harvinder Singh, 22, Kamaljeet Singh, 27, and Sumit Vermani, 26, are defending the charges in the high court in Hamilton, Fairfax NZ News reported Tuesday.

The woman has claimed that the four men raped her in the course of an evening during the Hamilton 400 weekend, the V8 supercar racing event that took place on the streets of that New Zealand city.

While Amir Chand, Harvinder and Sumit are from Hamilton, Kamaljeet is from Kaitkati town in New Zealand's North Island.

Prosecutor Philip Crayton said the woman, who was aged 19 at the time of the incident, was drinking with a friend near the Waikato Stadium near Hamilton where the ZZ Top group was performing.

The two then went to a Pak N Save shop on Mill Street where they met a 16-year-old girl from the US.

The duo then asked the 16-year-old to accompany them to the city and the three started walking across the Pak N Save parking space.

It was then that a car driven by Chand with Vermani in the passenger seat pulled up beside the trio.

The men then asked the trio to get in the car.

Giving evidence via video link from another room in the court premises, the victim said that she had initially declined to get in but since their 16-year-old friend knew the men, they eventually got in.

However, she said she got worried when the car, instead of heading towards the city, started taking the road to Lake Rotoroa.

She said she and her friends were taken to a house on Lake Road where she alleged she was raped first by Chand and then by the other three men.

She also stated that she initially tried to resist but eventually gave up "hoping that it would be over sooner" and later suffered an asthma attack.

When the prosecutor asked her about the ethnicity of the perpetrators, she said, "Indian".