An Indian businessman has been deported and banned from Switzerland for five years after being found guilty of the rape of a teenage girl on a flight from Mumbai to Zurich.
A court in the Swiss town of Bülach found the 44-year-old businessman guilty of rape after he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl on a Swiss airlines flight to Zurich in March 2025.
He was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence, deported from the country and banned from re-entering Switzerland for five years.
The court heard how the man targeted the young girl on the nine-hour flight from Mumbai to Zurich.
The prosecution said the girl was left too shocked and frightened to raise the alarm or flee the attack.
The man was arrested when the flight landed in Zurich and placed in custody.
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After the trial he was released from prison and handed over to Swiss immigration officials to be deported.
According to Swiss news site Blick the case was the first that applied the country’s new laws around sexual offences and rape.
For over thirty years, the country’s Swiss Criminal Code considered rape to require penetration and physical resistance from the victim, in order to be prosecuted.
Verbal communication of a clear ‘no’ or any consideration of the victim’s state of shock or fear were not seen as determining factors in prosecution.
But, from July 1st 2024 the principle of “no means no” began to be applied in rape investigations and prosecutions, in Switzerland with verbal refusal of consent taken into consideration by police and the judiciary.
Courts were given grounds to consider the victim’s state of shock or fear, in the absence of a verbal refusal.
READ ALSO: Switzerland’s new law around rape comes into force
