Restaurateur accused of spiking woman’s drink with date-rape drug tells jury he was ‘wrong’
A restaurateur accused of slipping a date rape drug into a woman’s drink at a private members-only club has tearfully told a jury that putting the substance in her drink was “wrong”.
Vikas Nath, 63, used a straw to put gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) into the woman’s drink as she sat at the rooftop garden bar at Annabel’s, Mayfair, on January 15, 2024, a hearing at Southwark Crown Court heard.
Nath, who owns a portfolio of top restaurants in the UK and Spain, including two Michelin-starred restaurants, admitted contributing to the woman’s spicy margarita drink, but prosecutors say this was to “comfort” the woman rather than part of a plan to have sex with her.
Giving evidence on Wednesday, Nath, from Knightsbridge, west London, tearfully told jurors: “What I did was wrong and I deeply regret it.”
But he denied that his intention was to “stupid and overwhelm” the woman.
The court panel said that the defendant mixed the substance, which he thought was a cleaning fluid, into tequila and put it in the woman’s drink to “calm down”.
The man said the woman was behaving “erratically”, adding that he intended for her to “be less anxious and calm down a bit”.
Asked by his lawyer Eleanor Laws KC what he thought about sex, Nath replied: “I wasn’t thinking about it.”
Nath told jurors that he himself had consumed the substance several times before that night because it potentiated the effects of alcohol.
The court heard Annabel also took a sip of the drink before entering her shop.
The woman and Nath met several times before the events on January 15, 2024, usually for lunch, the court heard; These included Beaverbrook Town House’s five-star hotel and Nath’s Michelin-starred Mayfair restaurant Benares, the court heard.
Jurors had previously heard the defendant say in a police interview that he bought the substance as cleaning fluid for his BMW i8 car in about 2016 and was told by a friend that it could be drunk with alcohol as a “relaxer”.
The court heard the man told officers he did not know what the drug was.
Jurors previously heard that on Jan. 15, staff at Annabel’s noticed Nath dipping a straw into a small bottle of Madagascar vanilla extract that he pulled from his pocket and sucking up the liquid before transferring it to a margarita.
The court heard staff managed to replace the drugged drink with a fresh one before the woman drank it, and Nath threw the GBL bottle into the toilet cistern while police were on their way.
Nath denies attempting to administer a substance with intent to possess a Class B drug.
The trial continues.
