Coventry rapist who impersonated police officer jailed for eight years - The Coventry Observer

Coventry rapist who impersonated police officer jailed for eight years

Coventry Editorial 5th Jul, 2017   0

A policeman’s father posed as an officer himself as he blackmailed a woman into paying him money and having sex with him after tricking her into a meeting through a dating website.

But calculating Randeep Tamne told ‘a pack of lies,’ claiming it was his victim who had wanted sex – right up until the day of his trial at Warwick Crown Court.

It was only then that Tamne, who had used a friend’s home in Coventry for the meeting, finally changed his pleas to guilty on charges of rape, blackmail and impersonating a police officer.

Tamne (43) of Harnall Lane West, Coventry, was jailed for eight years and one month and was ordered to register as a sex offender for life.




Judge Andrew Lockhart QC also imposed a sexual harm prevention order on Tamne with a number of restrictions, including one banning him from using or registering on any dating website.

Prosecutor Jennifer Josephs said that in July last year a woman in her mid-20s from the East Midlands had been chatting to a man who had posted details on the Plenty of Fish dating website.


According to his details, and his photograph, he was a six-foot-tall white, but tanned, fitness instructor.

He suggested meeting each-other, and asked her to send him a couple of intimate pictures of herself – so she sent one topless picture and one of her in underwear to his phone.

It was agreed she would drive to Coventry to meet him at an address in Wycliffe Road West, which he claimed was his home, but was in fact the home of a friend who was away at the time.

When she knocked on the door, expecting it to be opened by a buff fitness instructor, she was surprised when someone else, a stocky, middle-aged Asian man, answered the door.

Immediately assuming she had got the wrong house, the young woman apologised and left.

Rather than leave well alone, Tamne phoned her, asking who she was and why she had come to the house, and telling her: “You need to get back here or I will have you arrested.”

He said he wanted to know why she had sent the pictures to his phone, claiming they had been seen by his child, and that he was a police officer and that in sending them she had committed an offence.

When she returned, Tamne, who maintained he was not the person she had been in contact with, said he should report her for committing an offence by sending such material over the phone.

She agreed to pay a ‘fine,’ and went to a cash machine from where she withdrew £250 which she gave him.

But Tamne said that was not enough, and that she would have to have sex with him – manipulating her into thinking that, although she did not want to, she had no choice if she did not want to be sent to prison.

He then made her perform oral sex on him before having intercourse with her without using any protection.

Not content with that, he told her to withdraw a further £200 which she gave to him.

The next day she paid him a further £500 by pushing it through the letter box of the house, after he had promised to delete the pictures of she did so.

His messages then became even more threatening as he demanded more money, and she would have paid him another £1,500 if she had not spoken to her mother who advised her to report it.

When he was arrested at the address in Wycliffe Road West, Tamne, who had spent the money he obtained in a casino, claimed the sex with her had been consensual.

He said she had just turned up at the door and said she had the wrong address, but the photos had then popped up on his phone, so he had contacted her and asked her to come back so he could ‘give her some advice’ about sending such pictures.

He denied telling her he was a policeman, and claimed that when she returned, she had told him she was looking for sex, which Miss Josephs commented was ‘a complete pack of lies.’

The court heard that in an impact statement, his victim says she is now ‘riven with anxiety’ and cannot trust policemen.

Ramya Nagesh, defending, said: “Albeit at a late stage, he has accepted responsibility, and he’s aware he’s facing a lengthy custodial sentence.”

She said Tamne had worked as a machine operator with Jaguar Land Rover for six years, and had two young children, aged three and five, but had split up with his wife, and also had an older son in his early 20s who is a police officer.

Jailing Tamne, Judge Lockhart told him: “She went onto a dating website, expecting to be safe.  She was anything but safe when she came across the profile you had posted.

“The profile was wholly false.  As soon as she arrived it was clear you were not the person she had believed you were, and she had sent intimate photographs to you posing as that man.

“She made her apologies and left, but you contacted her and informed her she had committed an offence by sending you pictures of herself.  That was a wicked thing to do.

“It was inevitable she would return, fearful she would be publicly shamed if she did not.  You began your scheme to take money from her, and you then suggested sex as a payment.

“She said she did not want sex, and it would have been plain to any man with an ounce of humanity that you were taking her to a place she did not want to go.

“Under duress, she had sex with you.  It is absolutely clear she was never in any real sense consenting.”

And the judge added: “You have a son who is a police officer.  That makes your offending, if not more serious, then more sinister.”

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