A LECHEROUS restaurant boss who tried it on with young women who applied for jobs as waitresses, even after he had twice been questioned by the police, has been jailed.
Prashant Sengar, of Cornyx Lane, Solihull, who the boss of the now-closed Spicy Affair restaurant in Victoria Terrace, Leamington, claimed all six woman who made complaints about him were lying.
And even though a jury at Warwick Crown Court found him guilty of seven charges of sexual assault, he continued to shake his head as the judge outlined the offences while sentencing him.
The 40 year-old was jailed for 22 months and ordered to register as a sex offender for ten years.
Judge Andrew Lockhart QC also imposed an indefinite sexual harm prevention order banning him from interviewing female job applicants without a chaperone.
Prosecutor Lee Marklew had told the jury: “Prashant Sengar is a man with wandering hands. He abused his position of authority with these ladies.”
His first victim started work at Spicy Affair in 2012, and he soon began slapping her bottom as he went past her.
At first she brushed it off, but he then assaulted her more seriously as she got her coat at the end of shift, grabbing her from behind, turning her round and trying to kiss her.
Fortunately customers came in, and he left to attend to them, but two days later he again tried to forcibly kiss her, telling her when she resisted she could not want the job that much if that was her attitude.
She quit and reported it to the police but when he was arrested Sengar claimed she was lying, and with one word against another, it was decided not to charge him.
But far from that being a warning, having got away with it once, the restaurant boss continued with his behaviour.
In the spring of 2013 two friends who were looking for work went for interviews with Sengar after seeing a job advert, and he talked to them in an unsettling and inappropriate manner.
Then while a staff member showed one of the girls around he took hold of the other girl’s knee and asked if she would be interested in modelling for him.
When she froze, Sengar told her to go upstairs and to ask her friend to come down – and he then tried it on with her, putting his hand on her thigh and leaning in to try to kiss her.
The girls reported him, and Sengar was arrested again, but claimed there was nothing sexual in touching the first girl’s knee and denied anything at all had happened with her friend.
But although an officer made the connection with Sengar’s first victim, the CPS still decided to take no action.
Sengar interviewed another young woman who had applied for a job, draping his arm over her shoulder and stroking her back as he showed her the till, and began patting her bottom after she started work.
The day before she walked out over that, Sengar rubbed the thigh and bottom of yet another woman as he interviewed her.
She contacted the police after telling her partner what happened – and Dc Tim O’Mahoney, who had been ‘watching’ Sengar, found documents at the restaurant through which he was able to trace other victims including a woman who had responded to an online advert for dancers placed by an agency called Lumos Events which Sengar had an interest in. He assualted her during an interview at a Birmingham hotel.
Justin Jarmola, defending, said Sengar and his wife had a £1400-a-month mortgage and she had become the sole breadwinner, with their two young children having to attend a pre-school breakfast club and an after-school club to enable her to do so.
“Their financial situation is perilous,” added Mr Jarmola, who argued that the input of a sex offenders’ programme was what Sengar needed, rather than custody.
But jailing Sengar, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told him: “You have been involved in a series of offences committed against young women who sought employment at your restaurant or in entertainment. I am sure this was planned activity.”
