Tension brewed between taxi drivers at a staging area in the St John carpark where taxis wait to enter Queenstown Airport.
Months of tension between airport taxi drivers have culminated in one threatening another’s wife, saying he’ll “smash her teeth in”, leaving the woman “scared witless”.
The threatening taxi driver was known as Thappi among the drivers at Queenstown Airport, thanks to the personalised number plate on his white Toyota Camry.
His name is Magan Vashisht, and this week he appeared before Judge Andrée Wiltens in a judge-alone trial at the Queenstown District Court on two charges of threatening to do grievous bodily harm and threatening to injure.
The charges related to an incident on September 21, 2024, at the Queenstown Airport staging car park, an area where taxis line up before entering the airport.
The taxis leave the staging area one at a time, with one taxi per lane entering at a time.
Another taxi driver, Darrin Evans, told the court via audio-visual link from Greymouth police station that he was at the staging carpark about 8pm when Vashisht drove his car in front of him, blocking Evans’ taxi from entering the airport.
“He started yelling obscenities at me,” Evans told the court.
“He started off by yelling, ‘Tell your f***ing wife she’s a sl**, she’s a wh***. I am going to f***ing finish her.’”
Evans said Vashisht threatened to kick his wife’s teeth in and smash her into the ground so she “smelt like sh**”.
“He said, ‘I’ll smash you to the f***ing ground so you’ll smell like sh** too.’”
He recalled that Vashisht also said, “‘I’ll bury you and bury her,’ or something to that effect.”
Vashisht drove away and joined the back of the taxi queue, but then exited his vehicle. Evans drove into the airport to collect passengers.
The abuse came about after Vashisht had an altercation with Evans’ wife earlier that evening in the same area.
Jocelyn Evans, a taxi driver at the same company as her husband, was waiting at the staging carpark and was next in line to enter the airport when she was cut off by Vashisht after a miscommunication on who would enter first.
She pulled into the airport and approached Vashisht, and told him he had cut her off, she told the court, also via audio-visual link.
“He just became verbally abusive,” she said.
“He said, ‘Do you have a problem with me?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely I do.’”
She then returned to her vehicle, picked up a passenger and left the airport.
She told the court she was “scared witless” when her husband told her later that night about his own altercation with Vashisht.
The court heard this wasn’t the first time Darrin Evans and other airport taxi drivers had had issues with Vashisht. Evans had filed 11 complaints against Vashisht to his manager in two months.
“He was well known to us, and we were all aware of where he was and where he turned up,” he said.
His colleagues had approached him after the September 21 incident to ask if he was okay, Evans said.
Defence lawyer DeAnne Nicoloso told the court that Evans had emailed Queenstown Airport on September 2 asking to have Vashisht “banned for life from entering the airport”, which Evans accepted he had done.
“I wrote a lot of emails in regards to ‘Thappi’ at the time, because the complaints from drivers were daily.”
When taking the stand to give evidence in his defence, Vashisht told Judge Wiltens that the altercation with Evans never happened.
“The incident at 8pm has never occurred; it is a false allegation.”
However, he accepted that he had an altercation with Jocelyn Evans earlier that evening.
After the incident with her, he said he picked up an Australian couple to take them to the Novotel, dropped them off about 7.50pm, before getting an Indian takeaway and driving home. He said he was not in the vicinity of the airport to be able to have an altercation with Darrin Evans.
However, Queenstown Airport carpark data collected by police showed Vashisht entered the airport at 7.50pm.
He claimed the timing on the record was incorrect, as the barrier arm to enter the airport was broken, and airport staff manually entered the time.
Vashisht estimated he left the airport about 7.45pm, but there was no exit barrier to confirm this.
After hearing the evidence, Judge Wiltens found Vashiht made serious threats to harm the Evanses.
“I do not believe your evidence. I believe what Mr Evans has said is true,” the judge told Vashisht.
“I’m satisfied that you did threaten Mrs Evans to cause grievous bodily harm against her.
“I’m also satisfied you intended to scare, intimidate and threaten Mr Evans.”
Vashisht was found guilty on both charges.
He also appeared before the judge on a separate charge relating to accusations of threatening and intimidating another taxi driver on New Year’s Eve in central Queenstown. On this, he was found not guilty.
Vashisht will be sentenced in April.
Brianna McIlraith is a Queenstown-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the lower South Island. She has been a journalist since 2018 and has had a strong interest in business and financial journalism.