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This is the moment a Michelin-star restaurant boss spikes a woman’s spicy margarita with a substance hidden in a Madagascan vanilla extract bottle while she’s not looking.
Vikas Nath, 63, admitted using a straw to put gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) into the drink while sitting in the rooftop garden bar of Annabel’s members club in Mayfair on January 15, 2024, a trial at Southwark Crown Court was told.
The restaurateur – whose portfolio of venues across the UK and Spain includes two with Michelin stars – insists he spiked the alcoholic beverage to make the woman ‘less anxious’ rather than as part of a plan to have sex with her, prosecutors say.
Now CCTV footage obtained by the Daily Mail shows Nath brazenly tampering with the drink within yards of colleagues and customers enjoying their evening at the £3,750-a-year club in Berkeley Square.
Relaxing on the plush cushioned sofa which dominates the top floor of Annabel’s, the suit-clad restaurateur can be seen holding a phone in his left hand and a straw in his right.
He first dips the straw into what is believed to be the victim’s drink, although at this stage he has not yet added any of the spiking substance onto the straw.
Nath takes a sip of the beverage from the tip of the straw before placing it back down on one of the lounge’s circular tables.
Seconds later, the reclining restaurant boss uses his right hand to reach into his trouser pocket and appears to pull out a small bottle filled with a substance.
Just one table away from a customer sitting on a barrel-shaped chair, Nath shuffles awkwardly in his seat and puts down his phone in order to free up his left hand.
He grabs the straw again and seems to dip it into the bottle of substance but attempts to hide it from view as a diner walks past him.
Nath then returns the straw to the table top and appears to look at his phone for a few moments to allow those bustling around the restaurant to sit back down.
The moment a roaming customer moves out of sight, the restaurateur dips the straw into the target drink and gives it a stir before once again having a taste of the residue.
He previously told jurors he had himself consumed the substance a few times before that night as it heightened the effects of alcohol.
Nath also took a ‘swig’ of it before entering Annabel’s, the court heard.
The boss then casually scrolls on his phone and reclines in his seat before appearing to dip the straw back into the bottle and into the spicy margarita twice more.
Nath seems to return the bottle of substance to his pocket before laying back on the sofa again.
Staff managed to switch the drugged drink for a fresh one before the woman drank from it, and Nath threw the bottle of GBL into a toilet cistern when police were on the way, the court heard.
Giving evidence on Wednesday Nath, who is a director of Termdeal Ltd, which owns high-end Indian restaurant Benares in Mayfair, told jurors through tears: ‘What I did was wrong and I regret it very deeply.’
But he denied that his intention was to ‘stupefy and overpower’ the woman.
The defendant said that he had mixed the substance, which he thought was cleaning fluid, with tequila and that he had put it in the woman’s drink to ‘calm’ her, the court heard.
He said that the woman had been ‘erratic’, adding that he intended for her to be ‘less anxious and for her to calm down a little bit’.
Asked by his barrister, Eleanor Laws KC, whether he had intended to have sex with her, Nath replied: ‘I wasn’t thinking about that.’
The woman and Nath met a few times before the events of January 2024, often for lunch – including at the Beaverbrook Town House five-star hotel and Michelin-starred restaurant, Benares, the court heard.
Jurors had earlier heard the defendant said in a police interview he had originally bought the substance as a cleaning fluid for his BMW i8 car in about 2016, and had been told by a friend that it could also be drunk with alcohol as a ‘relaxant’.
GBL is known to have been used as a fluid to clean alloy wheels.
Police later searched Nath’s home and found two bottles of the substance under his sink, it was said.
He told officers that he was not aware what the drug was, the court heard.
In response to a question about how he had met the woman, Nath said: ‘I met her very briefly by the side door of the building in late October or early November 2023. She said that we could meet sometime over lunch or coffee.’
Nath, of Knightsbridge, west London, explained when they were out shopping, he told her he was interested in starting a relationship with her and that in response she ‘smiled’.
Ms Laws went on to ask him about messages he had sent to his friend about the complainant.
‘Now that you have had the opportunity to consider the tone and content of those messages since you sent them, now looking at them in the cold light of day, what do you think about the kind of things you were saying?’ she asked.
‘They were very crude messages,’ he replied.
On January 11 – four days before the spiking incident – the pair went to the Cirque Le Soir nightclub in the West End.
Nath messaged the woman the next day telling her he had been worried her drink might get spiked.
He told the court: ‘We were in a strange place…She was going away to the bathroom sometimes and leaving her drinks and personal belongings on the table.
‘She was behaving very erratically, she was very hyper. Someone who has drunk that much I would expect that.’
He claimed the woman had asked to come back to his flat, but that he had said no, adding: ‘I didn’t want my adult son seeing me with a woman.’
The restaurant boss said: ‘I thought I agreed that it might lead to a sexual liaison.’
Nath said that on the night of the spiking he wanted to speak to the woman about ‘taking [the relationship] to the next level’.
‘Did you consider when you were on the way to Annabel’s that the relationship was purely platonic?’ asked Ms Laws.
‘No’, Nath replied.
He explained they had exchanged numerous messages and that some of them had been flirtatious, and added they had been ‘cuddling and kissing.’
Jurors previously heard staff at Annabel’s on January 15 noticed Nath dipping a straw into a small Madagascan vanilla extract bottle he had retrieved from his pocket, to suck up liquid before transferring it to the margarita.
Nath denies attempting to administer a substance with intent and possession of a Class B drug.
The trial continues.
