A mindless and brutal murder
Few murders are as brutal as that of
Sandeep Dhiman.
The IT worker came to New Zealand in 2015 with a life of hope and promise ahead of him. He was found dead in a roadside ditch near Napier on December 18, 2017 – which would have been his 31st birthday.
Why did he die? Because 17-year-old Rosie Lewis wanted a car, any car – even Dhiman’s 2006 Toyota Passo – and she thought nothing of having someone killed to get it.
Her means of achieving this goal was as simple as it was stupid. She would befriend men on the dating app Tinder, arrange to meet them, then tell her friend Shaun Karauria that the man had molested her.
She would ask the 17-year-old Karauria to ‘‘smash’’ him, stab him and leave him somewhere remote.
She called Karauria her ‘‘cousin’’. The nature of their relationship is unknown.
They only became acquainted recently but she clearly had him on a string.
Dhiman was employed by Chorus and had been living in Napier for about seven months before his death. He came to
New Zealand to pursue his studies and job opportunities.
At some stage, he and Lewis were ‘matched’ on Tinder and they had met a few times.
On the afternoon of December 16, Dhiman purchased a new Samsung cellphone for Lewis. They took selfies together, her making signs with her fingers and poking out her tongue.
A few hours later, after he had dropped her home, Lewis used the phone to contact another Indian man on Tinder. On discovering he drove a Subaru Legacy, she arranged for him to take her, a friend, and Karauria for a drive that evening.
She spent the next few days getting Dhiman and the other man to ferry her and her friends between Napier, Hastings and Flaxmere, where she lived.
At some stage that weekend, according to the police summary of facts, she confided in a friend that she and Karauria were planning to ‘‘take an Indian for a drive and kill him on the weekend of 23 December, 2017’’.
For reasons unknown, Lewis brought the date forward to December 17. In the first hours of that day, she struck up a long conversation of text messages with the other man. Later that morning, she told Karauria she would be taking the man’s car.
But it had dawned on the man that she was only interested in his car and he declined to pick her up. So, an hour later, she got back on to Dhiman, who agreed to pick her and a friend up for a drive that afternoon.
Karauria, unaware that Lewis had given up on the other man and moved on to Dhiman, messaged Lewis to ask if he should take the car while Lewis distracted him. She replied: ‘‘If u want to.’’
Dhiman drove Lewis and her friend to a bottle store – where he bought a box of Cody’s bourbon and cola cans – to an Indian takeaways, and then to his home in Napier – where he made them dinner.
All the while Dhiman was doing this for Lewis and her friend, she was texting Karauria to arrange the location of the attack.
About 5.30pm, Dhiman took Lewis and her friend home to Flaxmere. At Lewis’s request, he collected Karauria and another male teenager along the way.
As they picked up Karauria, Lewis sent him a text saying ‘‘This is a different Indian, go with the flow’’.
After dropping the group off, Dhiman returned home. At 7.24pm, he received a text message from Lewis asking him to give her ‘nephew’ a lift home.
Dhiman picked up Lewis, Karauria and the other male from a Flaxmere address at 8.25pm.
Karauria, who had armed himself with a kitchen knife, sat in the vehicle’s passenger’s seat. Lewis and the other male sat in the back seats. They talked Dhiman into taking them to the remote rural area of Tutira, a 40-minute drive north of Napier.
As they made the trip, Lewis and Karauria were continuing their planning by text message.
Sometime after 9pm, the group arrived at a secluded location on Matahorua Rd. Karauria got out of the car and walked up a nearby driveway. Lewis told Dhiman he should go and talk with Karauria.
Dhiman and Karauria climbed over a gate and walked around a small bend in the driveway, out of sight of the car.
It was here that Karauria took out the kitchen knife and stabbed Dhiman nine times in the back, throat, heart and chest.
He stabbed his victim with such force that the blade of the knife broke from the handle.
Karauria returned to the car and threw the knife handle onto the ground.
The badly-injured Dhiman managed to climb back over the gate and stagger back to the road. He cried out for help before collapsing on the grass verge.
Karauria returned to Dhiman and kicked him in the head and stomped on his face until he thought he was dead.
The other male then removed two cellphones from Dhiman’s pockets.
Karauria got in the driver’s seat and drove off. But Lewis said she saw Dhiman move, so Karauria reversed the car, got out and stomped on his face again until he stopped moving.
As the trio drove back to Napier, Lewis grabbed one of the cellphones off the other male and said it was now hers. The other phone was thrown from the car and has never been found.
They drove back to Karauria’s house. The next morning, December 18, Karauria put a message on a local Facebook page asking if anyone wanted to buy a car for $1500. He entered into a conversation with a potential buyer, sending them a photo of the Passo and agreeing to sell it for $900.
The buyer took the car for a drive but decided not to buy it as she considered it too good to be true.
Meanwhile, Dhiman’s body had been found on the roadside. That evening, the other male went to the Napier police station to confess what had happened.
Dhiman’s cellphone was found at Lewis’ address.
Karauria told police he killed Dhiman because Lewis had told him that Dhiman had tried to touch her. Lewis, who had not previously appeared in court, told police she had limited knowledge of the plan to kill Dhiman but admitted knowing Karauria had a knife.
Karauria pleaded guilty to murder and aggravated robbery. In May, Justice Simon France sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 12 years. ‘‘I think everyone who hears these facts will be struggling to believe them. Planning to steal a car is one thing but literally planning, as you did, to kill the person as well is so callous and unnecessary as to defy belief.’’
Five weeks later, Lewis entered guilty pleas to charges of murder, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to rob. Yesterday, she was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 11 years.
Before sentencing Lewis, who is now 18, Justice David Collins told her that Dhiman’s mother was struggling to come to terms with her loss ‘‘for so little gain and for your selfish desires’’.
‘‘She was heartbroken reading through your text messages knowing that you planned to kill her son and that it was not just some random act of violence.’’
Dhiman’s father had said his pain was unbearable and that Lewis and Karauria had robbed him of his life as well as his son, the judge added.