A former flatmate of Brittany Higgins’ alleged rapist says she was forced to barricade her door after he burst into her room late at night demanding sex. Kriti Gupta, 24, lived with the man for five months in Sydney from October 2019 after moving from Brisbane and said he made multiple unwanted advances towards her during that period. Ms. Gupta met the man at a model UN conference in 2015 but only discovered he was the same man Ms. Higgins claimed raped her earlier this month. She said he barged into her room uninvited on two occasions. “Whenever he wanted to go out, there was always a sexual undertone. T” Yeah, we’ll have a wild night; we’ll come home and relax and spend time with each other,’ she told NCA NewsWire.
He’d hit on and touch me every time he was drunk. It was every fortnight. During one incident in December, Ms. Gupta was forced to barricade her door when he burst in at about 3 am demanding sex. “I heard him come home, and I kind of froze because I’d seen him come home drunk before, and it was never a fun experience,” she said. I jumped back into bed, and he barged into my room and demanded I have sex with him. I quickly closed the door and put my suitcase up against the door. A few hours after the incident, Ms. Gupta boarded a flight to Europe for a month-long holiday. She said the man was asleep when she left. I thought, look, he’s drunk. By the time you’re back, he’ll have forgotten about it. I just excused it because I had no choice,” she said.
Ms. Gupta was not on the lease and paid rent directly to the man, who had the power to kick her out. She said she always intended to stay for a “short period” as she adjusted to Sydney. “(But) even before I moved, he was creepy and sleazy towards me,” she said. She rejected his advances, saying she had a boyfriend and clarifying she was not interested in a sexual relationship.
But that “didn’t deter him from trying repeatedly, ” she said. Ms. Gupta also claimed he was “very controlling” about who was allowed to stay over. He said my brother couldn’t stay because he was having people around… but then no one came over,” she said. She said the only guest allowed to remain was a female friend visiting Ms. Gupta from Brisbane. “He found her ‘ridiculously attractive’ and clarified that to me. So that’s why it was OK for her to stay,” she said.
