NEW YORK: An Indian businessman has been convicted of sexually assaulting, choking and beating a woman he met on a dating website and faces up to 25 years in prison, a media report said.
Sanjay Tripathy, 48, of North Carolina was found guilty this week of criminal sex act, sex abuse, assault, strangulation and unlawful imprisonment in connection to the June 15, 2016 attack on the 38-year-old woman at a hotel in Times Square, The New York Daily News reported. He faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 18.
Tripathy was ordered held without bail by Justice Erika Edwards after his conviction in Manhattan Supreme Court. He had met the woman on a website that typically matches well-off older men with younger women. On the website, he had advertised himself as a millionaire.
The woman gave tearful testimony at trial in which she described a terrifying encounter with the former IT executive. He had asked her to his room with the promise of a "gift" after they had drinks at the hotel bar, the report said. Tripathy said they had consensual rough sex and that the woman had accepted payment for.
During the trial, the jurors were shown photos of her badly swollen and bruised face and neck. She had two black eyes, including one that was entirely bloodshot, and clumps of blood in her long, blond hair.
"I had to go to the restroom and I didn't even recognize myself in the mirror," she testified.
After the attack, during which she said she was choked to the point she thought she would die, she went across the street to a parked New York Police Department van and reported that Tripathy had tried to kill her.
According to the report, Tripathy's lawyer Franklin Rothman said after the verdict that the "photos that graphically depicted the extent of the beating were too much to overcome.
"I think they told a story, but only a partial story, of what really happened inside of that hotel room. And so while I certainly understand the jury verdict, I disagree with it wholeheartedly and I think they got this one wrong," he added. Tripathy will appeal "and the fight will go on," Rothman was quoted as saying by the report.