Iqbal Singh, 45, regularly invited young girls into his suburban shop, where they were given free vapes and alcohol while watching television in his rear room.
They only knew him as ’Tony’ and after building trust the victim believed she would be safe crashing out on his sofa bed after becoming drunk on rum punch at a friend’s party.
However, married father Singh, who claims he is from Afghanistan and enjoys indefinite leave to remain in the UK, massaged her legs with baby oil and began raping her when she passed out.
He received fourteen years imprisonment after a Croydon Crown Court jury convicted him of one count of rape on September 5, 2020, plus four counts of sexual assault between March 1 and September 6, the same year.
Singh, of Gascoigne Road, Croydon ran ‘Phone Repairs & Vape Shop’ in Station Way, Cheam, Sutton, having previously run ‘Mobilfox Vape’ near Hayes Station, where he sexually assaulted a different 16 year-old girl.
Yesterday, the complainant, now a university physiotherapy student, gave her victim impact statement in court and told Singh: “I want you to know you have stunted my growth and development.
“You have prevented me experiencing part of my childhood with friends and family.
“Just know the young girl you raped, traumatised and life you tried to ruin will continue and I will graduate from university and control my life and future.
“While you rot in prison, missing the years you will blame me for losing, acting as the poor victim who could not help himself, but rape the young drunken vulnerable schoolgirl, I will be free.
“I hope the judge gives you, the vile paedophile, the harshest of sentences.”
The victim and her two friends were regular visitors to Singh’s shop during covid lockdown, where he gave the children vapes, claiming they were free samples provided by suppliers.
He allowed them to smoke £20 THC vapes - which contain the psychoactive element of cannabis.
“It is clear to me you were grooming her,” Judge Antony Hyams-Parish told him. ‘You would lift her up under bottom and thighs and touched her for your own sexual gratification.”
Three of the sexual assaults occurred when Singh lifted the teenager up to reach THC vapes in the shop.
“She said it was weird as you slid her down your body.”
Fearing returning home drunk after the party the girl phoned Singh at midnight, believing he would assist her.
“She was so drunk she says she fell into a bush and did not want to go home and be grounded.
“You previously said if she ever needed you she could call and she trusted you and you picked her up and went to the vape shop and the back room with the sofa bed with a pillow and blankets set up.
“You fetched some THC vapes and set up tequila shots with salt and lime and she had two or three.
“She must have been high and you got some baby oil and began massaging her legs and aggressively moved up.”
The victim, who was a virgin, told the trial: “I was too drunk or too high to care. I was just ready to sleep.”
When she came around she was face down with Singh raping her. “When she woke up she could feel you breathing into her ear,” Judge Hyams-Parish told the defendant.
“She said that the next morning she was in a lot of pain and felt slimy and greasy. Her underwear was gone and her skirt was scrunched up around her waist.
“You gave her alcohol and drugs, knowing she had been to a party and had consumed alcohol.”
The judge ruled Singh was “dangerous” regarding young women and teenagers and passed an extended sentence for “public protection”, meaning the defendant will remain on licence for an additional eight years beyond the fourteen-year sentence.
The victim kept her ordeal a secret for many months until suffering a panic attack when drinking tequila on New Year’s Eve and revealing her secret to her mother the next day.
Singh denies there was ever any sexual activity with the girl, who he still claims was physically attracted to him.
In her victim impact statement the complainant added: “I was left numb, confused and in an emotional state and in my head everything went downhill.
“I did not tell anyone and it consumed me. I made the phone call, I trusted him.
“I am so angry at times that I wish ’Tony’ was dead. I have been in a chronic state of anxiety and depression.
“I grieve for the person I could have been, not the wreck I am today. I have struggled everyday since he raped me.”
Standing just feet from Singh’s trial lawyer Tara O’Gorman, she added. “I felt like I was on trial for this rape. She accused me of being in love with this monster.”
Ms O’Gorman told the court: “The prosecution cannot say it was planned. A telephone call was made and things flowed from there.
“He is aware there is only one type of sentence you can consider,” she told Judge Hyams-Parish. “He asks the sentence gives him hope of release in the not too far distant future.”
The jury cleared Singh of administering a substance, with intent to stupefy and overpower to allow sexual activity, namely tequila and cannabis.
He was sentenced in 2022 for the 2019 sexual assault at the Hayes Station shop and Judge Hyams-Parish made a restraining order prohibiting contact with the latest Cheam victim until further order.
Singh will serve at least two-thirds of the fourteen-year sentence before he is considered for parole.
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