A MAN who tricked staff at a Kenilworth hotel into giving him a key card to a drunken woman’s room, planning to carry out a sexual offence on her, has been jailed.
Kieran Sodhi had pleaded not guilty to trespass with intent to commit a sexual offence after letting himself into the woman’s room, but was convicted by a jury at Warwick Crown Court.
After an adjournment for a report to be prepared on the 30-year-old, Sodhi, of Littleover, Derby, was jailed for four years and ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
The court heard in January last year he was staying at the Chesford Grange Hotel for a works do, and the woman, who was in her 20s, was also attending a function there and staying overnight.
She had too much to drink and, incapable of standing unaided, was helped back to her room by two men from her party at around 1am, using her key card to get in.
Sodhi, who had met her on a previous occasion and had been talking to her during the evening when they had both gone outside for a cigarette, had a room on a different floor.
But as the two men were putting her on the bed, fully clothed, they saw Sodhi outside her room, and he asked whether she was OK and suggested she needed to be given some water.
He insisted he would get some from the bar, and they were so concerned about his intentions, they waited in the room for 20 minutes before leaving her, still lying on the bed fully clothed.
But she woke up next morning to find him in her room. She was then undressed and wearing only her knickers. Sodhi was sitting on the other side of the double bed fully clothed.
She asked if anything had gone on, and he said no, and was just looking after her. She told him to get out – and after later speaking to her mother, the police were contacted.
CCTV recordings showed Sodhi going to her room after she had been taken there, and then leaving and, after going outside, getting a glass of water from the bar.
He then went to the reception desk where, the jury heard, he claimed to be her partner and asked for a duplicate key card to her room.
Giving evidence, Sodhi claimed he had no sexual designs on her and had acted out of concern for her wellbeing. He also denied lying to get a key card.
At the resumed hearing, the court heard a statement from the victim who said her life had been going well, but all changed after that night, and she no longer enjoyed going out.
Nick Devine, defending, said Sodhi was held in high regard within his religious and local community.
Jailing Sodhi, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told him: “This has turned her whole world upside-down. She doesn’t know what happened in that room, and she has to live with that.
“I take the view you decided she was an attractive young woman, and you were keen to be with her. Any man would have known she was close to incapable of speaking. She had to be taken to her room, close-on unconscious.
“So keen were you to commit a sexual offence that you went to that room twice, having got the key. There was a significant degree of planning, especially for the second visit.
“My findings are that you entered that room intending to commit a sexual offence. You did not do so, but it must have been very frightening for her.”
