This is the alarm clock fitted with a hidden camera an accused serial rapist allegedly used to film himself raping five young Women.

Balesh Dhankhar, 43, is on trial facing 39 charges including 13 counts of rape of the Korean girls in January to October 2018.

He lured the women using fake job ads for a Korean to English translator for a fictitious company, then invited them to dinner after interviews.

Prosecutors alleged he spiked glasses of wine and other drinks with tablets of the sleeping drug Stilnox or infamous date-rape drug rohypnol, either at a restaurant or after luring them to his flat.

Photos inside the studio apartment at the World Square complex in the Sydney CBD showed the clock sitting on the cabinet next to his TV, pointed towards the bed.

The photos also showed other parts of his apartment, including the edge of the bed where the alleged rapes occurred, the view from his balcony, a couch, and some of his kitchen.

The plain black cube displayed the time in a classic digital readout with buttons on the back for setting the alarm.

However, there was also a small camera hidden inside the front of the clock that could be activated with a remote control.

Police discovered 47 videos of Dhankhar having sex with Korean women on his computer, catalogued under their names.

They allegedly included videos of the rapes, along with consensual sex with other women who were allegedly unaware they were being filmed.

The jury had to watch hours of these videos in the NSW District Court, and were so sickened they asked to go home early and resume the next day.

One of the videos allegedly shows Dhankhar force open one of the victims’ mouths to perform oral sex while she was unconscious.

Dhankhar claims the sex was consensual and all the women agreed to be recorded using the clock or his mobile phone.

Giving evidence in court, he denied bringing one of the women back to his flat in Sydney the night he allegedly raped her.

The jury also heard him claim to have listened as another of the women broke up with her boyfriend after they had sex, and how he was embarrassed that the sex he had with a third was too short.

The former ABC data contractor also explained how he got the Stilnox and rohypnol tablets he is accused of using to drug and rape the women.

Dhankhar was questioned by his lawyer Rebecca Mitchell about why the drugs, for which he had prescriptions, were in his flat when police raided it.

He told the court he was prescribed Stilnox in India because he was not sleeping well, and the same issue returned in 2018.

‘I was not myself,’ he said, explaining he slept just three to four hours a night and suffering anxiety, stress, and depression and being tired was affecting his work.

Dhankhar said he went to a doctor and was prescribed Zolpidem, as Stilnox is known in Australia, on March 5, 2018, after telling the doctor it worked for him in 2014.

Three days later he came back and said it wasn’t working, and was prescribed Hypnodorm (rohypnol) instead, but though it helped him sleep, his head was ‘foggy and cloudy’ during the day so there was ‘no point taking them’.

The doctor told him the Zolpidem would now be more effective and to switch back to that.

A jury heard he had a ‘very specific modus operandi’ to ensnare the women – using the same hotel, café, and Korean restaurant in almost all the alleged rapes. 

Dhankhar was asked about three of the woman who accused him of rape, and told the court his version of events.

The third woman he allegedly raped had a boyfriend at the time and told the court she pushed him away when he tried to dance with her and kiss her because of that.

When she woke up after allegedly being drugged and raped, she saw a condom wrapper and felt pain, leading her to realise they had sex.

She called her boyfriend in tears saying she didn’t know where she was and had to break up with him because of what happened.

Dhankhar instead told the court she willingly had sex with him after they got back to his flat on October 13, 2018, and told him she was thinking of breaking up with her boyfriend.

‘I don’t like my boyfriend, sometimes he’s rude to me or he gets angry so many times,’ he told the court she told him.

He claimed after they had sex she asked him ‘is it a one time thing or am I going to see you again?’

Dhankhar claimed to the court she told him she wanted to be break up with her boyfriend and if she did, ‘would you start a relationship with me?’

He told the jury that after he said yes, she called her boyfriend and broke up with him as he listed to the conversation. 

He said he heard her say: ‘Yeah I’ve been thinking about this and we need to break up… I think it’s not going to work’.

For the second woman he allegedly raped, Dhankhar gave a different timeline as to what happened on the night of October 9, 2018, than the prosecution’s case.

The court earlier heard woman woke up in his bed naked after allegedly being raped, and refused his offer and breakfast because she wanted to go home.

Dhankhar instead claimed that after they drank wine at his apartment he drove her to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair lookout and Observatory Hill, where they held hands and kissed.

He told the court that after coming back to his house they took of their clothes and passionately kissed on his bed, but she said she was too tired to have sex.

The court heard the woman slept next to him in his bed, and they had sex after waking up in the morning.

‘It was very clear that she wasn’t just consenting, she was leading,’ he told the court when asked if he was sure the woman consented.

However, he said afterwards ‘there was a bit of awkwardness I could feel’, perhaps because he only lasted 10 minutes in bed.

‘During conversations I was feeling a bit of embarrassment and shyness… maybe because the sex was too quick,’ he told the court.

Dhankhar later texted her saying ‘I’m sorry it became a little awkward in the morning’ and ‘I’m really sorry if you felt bad about anything’.

He told her ‘I’ll never push you for anything’ and said they could be friends and didn’t just have to have sex.

Dhankhar told the court this was just about the awkwardness he felt and not in response to anything in particular.

A note on a spreadsheet he kept of everyone who responded to the fake job ads read ‘got angry on base 4, doesn’t want to continue, close’.

Dhankhar again disagreed with the prosecution’s timeline about his second meeting with the first woman he allegedly raped.

His defence for all the other occasions he allegedly drugged and raped the five women and secretly recorded them was that the sex and videotaping was consensual and he never drugged anyone.

But this time he claimed after they went to Hard Rock Café in Darling Harbour on January 29, 2018, they went their separate ways.

Prosecutor Kate Nightingale earlier told the court they went back to his apartment after the dinner, where he gave her ice cream and wine.

Dhankhar then allegedly tried to dance and kiss her while she repeatedly refused, and was raped yet again.

The court heard that when she woke up with clothes on she didn’t realised she had been raped and only reported to after she was contacted by detectives in 2020. 

But Dhankhar testified none of that happened, and they instead parted after dinner and he went home where he spent the evening texting other women.

‘To the best of my memory no, she was not,’ he replied when asked in court whether the woman was ever in his flat that night.

About 8pm the next day he texted her: ‘I hope you don’t feel bad about anything but I really like you’ and said he knew they didn’t know each other well but they would get to know each other better. 

He sent her an email on February 1 saying she had ‘some misunderstand about what happened between us. Don’t feel bad about that, let us be friends’.

Dhankhar told the court this wasn’t in response to anything in particular, just a ‘gut feel’, and theorised it was to do with him saying he wanted a more serious relationship and she only wanted a casual one.

‘I was thinking about this because we both parted after the dinner, so I was think maybe there was something she didn’t feel good about… so I was trying to understand,’ he said.

Dhankhar on Wednesday gave his version of events about his initial meeting with the first woman, who accuses him of raping her six times that night.

He told the court that after they met in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in the Sydney CBD on January 25, 2018, they went to dinner at Koibito, a nearby Korean restaurant.

There he said they drank soju and flirted as they played Korean drinking games where the loser had to kiss the winner on the cheek – until she kissed his lips.

Dhankhar said eventually they were kissing even when the games didn’t require them to, and touching each other’s legs under the table.

He said he asked her ‘how about more than this’, to which ‘she said yes, she liked it’, and he inquired ‘so you like naughty stuff?’

‘Of course I like naughty stuff,’ he told the court she replied, leading to a conversation ‘exploring what each other likes’ in the bedroom.

Dhankhar at one point took out his phone and pointed it at her to ask if she liked being filmed while having sex, to which he said she replied: ‘that would be even more fun’.

The dinner went for about three hours, some of which was at the table of two of the woman’s friends she spotted dining together at the same restaurant.

Prosecutors allege he slipped a sedative into her drink at some point during the night, and as they paid for the bill she was so drugged he had to hold her up.

Dhankhar testified she came with him to his apartment willingly, and passionately kissed him the moment they got in the door.

He described his account of their sexual activity in great detail, and claimed she enjoyed the sex because she was intermittently moaning, and enthusiastically participating when she was on top.

By contrast, the court heard police later found videos allegedly showing Dhankhar rape her six times that night, all while she was unconscious and unresponsive.

Dhankhar, who spent the whole three-week trial to date showing no emotion in court even as alleged rape videos were played, broke down as he explained how he lured the women.

He admitted his ruse was ‘immoral’, his numerous affairs on his wife made him feel guilty, and blamed it all on a mid-life crisis. 

Dhankhar agreed with prosecution claims he ‘had a particular sexual interest in young Korean women’, which he said started with Korean cinema.

‘I’m drawn to the emotional side [of the cinema]… how they depict human emotion,’ he told the court.

He said his marriage started breaking down and his wife was spending months at a time in their home country of India with his young son.

Lonely and depressed, he started watching pornography frequently and attended Korean language meet-up groups and salsa classes to meet Asian women.

Dhankhar denied searching for porn of ‘unconscious or compromised people’ having sex, but may have watched them by accident. He denies having any interest in watching sleeping or drugged women porn.

Ms Nightingale earlier told the court Dhankhar allegedly accessed and bookmarked a large amount of pornography with Asian women and even more with Koreans. 

Videos allegedly included women who were unconscious or asleep such as ‘Korean girl sleeping f**ked by boy’. 

Dhankhar told the court he had three extramarital affairs, the longest being with a Japanese woman he met through friends at his salsa classes and dated for 18 months until late 2017.

He said their breakup prompted his elaborate scheme to meet girls through fake ads for Korean translators he posted on Gumtree on December 27, 2017.

One of the first to respond was a Korean woman, who can’t be named, who after several meetings began a consensual relationship with him in February.

‘I was deeply confused and also feeling somewhat guilty,’ he said of his decision to start yet another affair. 

‘It was a very complicated time for me… there was so many contradicting emotions and thoughts going on. 

‘My wife and child were in India and I felt bad about that, on the other side I was lonely in Sydney, I had broken up with [his girlfriend].

‘My mind and heart were completely split, feeling bad, feeling broken, the whole process of having an affairs was like being in quicksand and in a lonely moment I would think, what am I doing, why don’t I come out of it? 

‘I guess it was some kind of mental crisis, maybe a mid-life crisis.’

Dhankhar was arrested on October 21, 2018, after the fifth woman allegedly woke up while he was raping her, and sent messages to a friend while hiding in the bathroom.

The ‘lead data visualisation consultant’ worked for Sydney Trains during all the alleged rapes, and was hired by Pfizer and the ABC for one-year contracts while on bail in 2019 to 2021.

He is a prominent member of Australia’s Indian community, being the founding president of the OFBJP – an Australian support group for India’s ruling party.

Dhankhar is expected to continue giving evidence for the next week.