Train buffet operator guilty of sex assault on woman passenger

A TRAIN buffet cart operator sexually assaulted a customer by touching her legs as she feigned being asleep in order to avoid him.

Mahmood Essa, 29, touched the 41-year-old, who had been concerned about his earlier behaviour on the service from Manchester Airport to Glasgow Central.

Essa, of Bolton, was convicted after a trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court following the incident on June 17 last year.

The 41-year-old victim was travelling to Glasgow for a work meeting. She told the court she saw Essa on the train and said “no thank you” when he asked if she wanted anything from the trolley.

But he passed her again, and stopped at her seat with his trolley and smiled before walking by again. Essa then tried to join a conversation the woman was having with a man at the same table.

The court was told the man at her table got off and she was then sitting alone.

When she saw Essa coming towards her seat again she pretended to be asleep, with her feet on the chairs opposite her.

Asked if she opened her eyes she said: “No, because I was nervous.”

She told the court: “He started feeling my leg up with his hand.”

The woman said he went to her knee and she jumped up and asked him what he was doing.

On the trip, Essa also knocked on the door of the back cabin where a female colleague of his was working, an area he wasn’t allowed in.

The 38-year-old woman said he stood in the doorway and licked his lips “in a suggestive manner”, then winked. He mumbled something about paperwork and claimed he had permission to go into the cabin she was in. She told him she could not help him and closed the door. After she closed the door she said she was too scared to go to the toilet until the train arrived at Glasgow.

On what she meant by “suggestive” she replied: “It suggested he wanted to come to the back cabin for something sexual.”

Sheriff Valerie Johnston put Essa on the sex offenders’ register ahead of sentencing next month.