Accused absent but gets to speak

A man accused of biting the nipple of a sex worker and licking her face and neck claims she never lay down ground rules telling him not to do just that.

Indian businessman Inderjyot Singh is not at his trial in Wellington District Court, where he faces two charges of indecent assault, but it has not stopped him having a say.

A police video interview, recorded after the incident last year, was played to Judge Denys Barry yesterday.

Singh left New Zealand to return to India last year and has not returned, so the trial has gone ahead without him.

The Crown alleges Singh hired a sex worker at a Lower Hutt brothel in March 2016. She had told him she had rules that included no kissing, no digital penetration and no licking her face, neck or ears.

Instead, during sex, he bit her nipple and had licked her several times.

She managed to get him off her and, after an argument, she fled the house naked and hid outside while calling for help.

Singh was taken to Wellington Central Police Station and his clothes taken as evidence before he agreed to give a video interview to Detective Constable Lyndon McGaughran.

Singh said he went with his friend to the brothel. While his mate went with one woman, he opted to go with the complainant. She gave him a massage and then they had sex.

Singh said he had not finished but the woman said she wanted more money. He had already paid $100 and she wanted $100 more.

He said he had only $40 so he would have to go and get more. She could keep his phone until he got back.

However, he then said by the time he got his clothes on, she was trying to get out the back with his phone.

McGaughran asked if the woman had told him any rules.

‘‘No she didn’t said (sic) anything to me. She only said that $100, ah, for that half an hour, that’s what she said,’’ Singh said.

The complainant denied she had made up a story.

A lawyer appointed by the court to assist Singh in his absence, Kevin Smith, said the complainant had concocted the whole thing because she had wanted more money and had taken his phone.

The complainant told Smith that was absurd and that his client was lying.

She said she explained the rules twice to him before they went into the room.

‘‘I told him again in the room. I am very, very strict on that. It’s the first thing I tell each client.’’

She said she thought he was lovely when he first came in but she got angry when he bit her nipple. ‘‘Never, never have I enjoyed my nipples being touched.’’

The trial is continuing.