The owner of a Michelin-star restaurant has been found guilty of spiking a woman’s drink with a date-rape drug at a Mayfair private members’ club in a bid to overpower her for sex.
Vikas Nath, 63, laced the woman’s spicy margarita with gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) after she left him with the drink in the rooftop garden bar at Annabel’s in the exclusive area of London on 15 January 2024.
Southwark Crown Court heard Nath had grown frustrated with the woman’s apparent reluctance to have sex with him prior to the spiking incident and took GBL in a vanilla extract bottle with him to the club.
Nath had two bottles of the liquid drug at his home, in Knightsbridge, London, as well as a motion sensor-activated covert camera pointed at his bed.
The businessman, who owns Benares in Mayfair and other top restaurants in the UK and Spain, admitted in a police interview to past incidents when he had covertly filmed sex at his home.
Prosecutors said his plan was to drug the woman and take her back to his home for sex when she had been “overpowered or stupefied”.
However, Annabel’s staff noticed “rather strange actions” by Nath, who was using a straw to put GBL into the margarita, and intervened to stop the woman from drinking it.
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On Friday, Nath was found guilty by a jury of attempting to administer a substance with intent and possession of a Class B drug.
As the jury returned its verdicts, the restaurateur could be seen shaking his head in the dock.
He had been forced to admit spiking the woman’s drink after being apprehended by Annabel’s staff and recorded on the exclusive members’ club’s CCTV.
The court heard Nath – after realising he had been “rumbled” – threw the bottle of Madagascar vanilla extract into a toilet cistern, but it was later recovered by police.
Bar staff also managed to retrieve the spiked drink from the table, so it could later be tested by police forensics experts.
The woman told the court that she felt “betrayed” and had not believed the staff at first.
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“I remember vividly defending Mr Nath, saying ‘There is no way he could do that’,” she said.
“I remember sending him a message saying, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s happening’. Because I felt it was my fault.”
Nath had actually warned the woman about drinks being spiked before, messaging her saying: “My biggest concern last night was someone spiking your drink.”
The woman told the court that their relationship had not been a sexual one.
After he was arrested at the club, Nath admitted spiking the woman’s drink without her consent, but insisted he had been trying to “relax” her rather than overpower her for sex.
He claimed to have obtained GBL to clean the wheel rims of a high-powered car, on the advice of a friend.
In texts shown to the jury, Nath had described the woman to a friend as “eminently f***able”. He had said of their friendship “I want to get laid, not hold hands”, and suggested he would need to “play the long game”.
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On the day of the spiking incident, he wrote: “I’m at Annabel’s. This is probably the last evening with (her). She ain’t biting.”
Nath was “impatient with lack of progress”, said Prosecutor Tim Clark KC, telling jurors the restaurateur “wanted to have sex at his house where there was a camera, and it could record it”.
In the witness box, Nath broke down in tears as he admitted spiking the drink had been “wrong”.
“I regret it very deeply”, he said, but argued he had not been thinking about sex at the time.
He also argued that he did not realise the substance was an illegal drug.
After the guilty verdicts, Timothy Greaves, from the CPS, said: “Spiking is an incredibly serious offence that leaves victims traumatised and fearful.
“While these offences can often go undetected, the CPS is clear that offenders like Nath will face the full extent of the law so we can deliver the justice victims deserve.”
A further hearing in Nath’s case has been scheduled for 16 February.
