A rapist taxi driver who preyed on teenage girls after picking them up as fares in Dundee city centre has been jailed.
Saifal Zaveri, 42, subjected a 17-year-old student to a rape ordeal in his taxi after driving away from her home destination in Dundee.
The married father-of-three also molested a 16-year-old passenger during a journey from Dundee to Monifieth.
Raped student in lay-by
Zaveri carried out an oral rape attack on the older girl on August 14 2021 after agreeing to drive her residential accommodation in Dundee.
The woman, now 19, told the High Court in Edinburgh that after getting into Zaveri’s taxi he drove her to her address but turned the car around and went to a lay-by.
She said: “I was scared. I just remember him going on about sexual things.”
“First of all he was saying I was good looking and then he went to kissing me.
“I had a top on with a zip down the front of it and he unzipped it.”
She told the prosecutor she did not want any of it to happen.
She said his actions were carried out quite aggressively.
The woman said Zaveri then exposed himself.
“He grabbed the back of my head and was trying to push it down.
“He pushed it down towards his groin.”
She told advocate depute Margaret Barron that after the rape “he said that it was good”.
The student got back to her address in Dundee and contacted a friend through Snapchat voice notes.
She said she was feeling “awful” at the time and added: “I was crying.”
Her friend told the court she sounded “terrified” and “scared”.
Assaulted younger girl
Zaveri touched the younger girl on the thigh and subjected her to a penetrative assault as she sat in the front seat of his cab on March 1 2020.
He told the court nothing sexual happened with the younger girl, who had got in his taxi with a friend.
He said she was feeling cold and kept putting her hand on his hand.
He dropped the girls off after the journey and said everything was ” fine” at the time.
Zaveri admitted there was sexual activity with the older girl but claimed it was consensual.
He told the court: “I let my family down.”
CCTV was not recording
Zaveri of Mayfield Grove, Dundee, had denied sexually assaulting the 16-year-old in 2020 and sexually assaulting and raping the 17-year-old in 2021 but was found guilty of both offences.
During the police investigation it was discovered a CCTV system fitted inside the Zaferi’s taxi had not recorded material for months before the sex attack.
Following the jury’s verdicts the trial judge, Lord Fairley, ordered Zaveri, who had been on bail, be remanded in custody ahead of sentencing.
The judge called for a background report and risk assessment to be prepared.
He was placed on the Sex Offenders Register and is due to be sentenced on August 4 at the High Court in Glasgow.
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