Wrong man on trial, rape victim tells court
A pensioner gang-raped in a cemetery shortly after she was widowed has told a court the wrong man is on trial.
The 62-year-old, who was allowed to leave the witness box, approach the dock and peer at the defendant, insisted he was innocent despite a one in a billion DNA match linking him to her ordeal.
She said he had not been one of the three who hauled her to the ground as she strolled through the tombstones and subjected her to a 30-minute nightmare.
It left her with a broken rib, bruised and bleeding and "shaking like a leaf", London's Harrow Crown Court heard.
At one stage her attackers tried to suffocate her.
Vaithilingham Balachandran, 30, of Wembley, north London, denies one count of rape in July last year.
The woman told the jury it was one of the older men who had forced her to have sex.
She then announced Balachandran, whom she had failed to pick out at an earlier police identification parade, had not been there that night.
The trial was adjourned until tomorrow.
