The trial for a North Shore Taxi driver charged with sexually assaulting a woman in his cab has begun in North Vancouver provincial court.
Deepak Sharma, 61, was arrested following the incident on Squamish Nation land in the early morning of Jan. 2, 2019.
The victim and a friend, whose names are protected by a publication ban, were riding in Sharma’s cab, dancing as Sharma was blasting music and flickering the interior lights.
The alleged assault happened when they stopped for two minutes outside a friend’s house and the victim was alone in the cab with Sharma. She was in the front seat where, she testified, Sharma had encouraged her to sit.
Parts of the incident were captured by the cab’s onboard security cameras, which take still images every few seconds, but immediately before the alleged assault, Sharma pulled down the sun visor, blocking the lens, the victim testified.
The victim wept in court Monday as she testified about what happened next.
Sharma grabbed her left hand and tried to place it on his partially exposed genitals, she said. “I pulled my hand away and I pulled the sun visor back up. And I told him ‘I’m not like that. I don’t do things that way.’”
Her friend jumped back in the cab a few moments later and they left for the victim’s house.
The victim said she wanted to get out of the cab but she was too frightened to move.
“I was scared,” she told the court. “I was just frozen.”
After they got out of the cab, the victim told her friend, who confronted Sharma. The victim’s father called North Shore Taxi to tell them what happened and called police.
Asked how she’d been feeling since the incident, the victim simply said “upset.”
Under cross examination, Sharma’s lawyer Amandeep Sidhu questioned the victim’s memory of the incident.
Sidhu pointed to her first statement to police given the night of the assault, in which she said she did not actually touch his genitals. The lawyer also suggested to her that she had been flirting with the driver, which she denied.
The trial is scheduled to last three days before resuming in April.
