Tinder rape accused claims ‘brain freeze’

The man accused of raping his Tinder date allegedly told the woman ‘‘traffic police’’ would get her in trouble if she did not drink fast enough as he drove her around.

Wellington man Amitesh Deepak Kumar, 32, said he experienced a ‘‘brain freeze’’ when police interviewed him 39 days after a waterfront date ended in a city hotel room.

Kumar gave evidence on the trial’s third day, after pleading not guilty in Wellington District Court on Monday to one charge of sexual violation by rape.

He met the complainant, a recent arrival from overseas, through Tinder in March last year.

Digital footprints in most texts, Tinder messages and bar receipts were not in dispute, but many other accounts of what happened that evening diverged wildly.

Police interviewed Kumar several weeks after the woman was interviewed. He was arrested on June 10 last year.

Yesterday, defence lawyer Karun Lakshman asked Detective Lesa Eastergaard why it took that long to question and arrest Kumar, who had made no attempt to hide or conceal his identity.

‘‘In a case like this . . . it would be important to try and get the suspect’s account of things sooner rather than later,’’ he said.

Eastergaard, the officer in charge of the investigation, said that it was important to ‘‘get some facts first’’, and detectives could be working on up to six files at a time.

Kumar was co-operative, but some accounts he gave to police then were different from those the jury and Judge Ian Mill heard this week.

He said he and the woman drank wine at St Johns bar in Cable St, then took a drive around the bays east of the city, drinking RTDs bought at Liquorland Miramar and stopping at scenic areas.

Kumar said he once lost sight of the woman, before ‘‘she came back from the bushes’’ after relieving herself.

When they returned to the city, Kumar wanted to go home, he told the court, but they visited The Green Man pub, where he paid for two 250ml glasses of wine.

He claimed the woman then said ‘‘she can’t go home like this’’ and he assumed that meant it was too early to call it a night.

‘‘We mutually agreed if we could get a place, we could party there, or just [stay] there.’’

At Downtown Backpackers, Kumar said his date was ‘‘very normal’’, but struggling with her high heels.

He added: ‘‘We were both not sober [when] we walked in the room.’’

Lakshman asked Kumar if he had sex with the complainant against her will. Kumar said he had not, but recalled the woman being on top of him.

Within 48 hours, she had texted him, asked him what happened, suggested he had raped her, and told him to ‘‘get lost’’.

Kumar said that when Eastergaard first interviewed him, he had ‘‘a total brain freeze’’.

Crown prosecutor Matthew Ferrier derided this claim.

‘‘It’s not every day you get accused of rape. You wouldn’t possibly have forgotten, in the space of 38 days, text messages accusing you of rape.’’

Ferrier suggested Kumar was this week exaggerating accounts of how drunk he had been, while downplaying the effects of alcohol on the woman.

He asked why someone knowing the dangers of drink-driving would keep driving after a glass of wine and four RTDs.

He asked why the complainant claimed Kumar said ‘‘traffic police would get her in trouble’’ if she did not finish the liquor quickly in the car. ‘‘You were encouraging her to drink,’’ Ferrier said.

The trial, before a jury of seven men and five women, continues.