A FOREIGN student has been sexually assaulting women on buses.

Trunalkumar Patel grabbed his victims on buses at Poole bus station and Bournemouth’s Horseshoe Common before they fought him off and fled to call the police.

The 30-year-old told magistrates in Bournemouth he was “making friends” during the incidents as he pleaded guilty to four sexual offences of touching women without consent.

Lee Turner, prosecuting, said on one of two offences committed on March 4 Patel, of Cecil Road, Bournemouth, started talking to a woman on a bus at Horseshoe Common in Bournemouth.

He said: “There was some sort of brushing against each other and then the defendant grabbed her bottom and she fled the bus to call the police.”

At Poole bus station on Wednesday, March 20, Patel sat next to another woman on a busy bus.

Mr Turner said: “The defendant sat next to her and started to rub on her knicker line and tried to grab her before she elbowed him away.”

The first offence happened on February 13 on an M1 Wilts and Dorset More bus running from Bournemouth to Poole, when he started talking to a woman and who noticed his hand on her leg, the court heard.

Mr Turner said Patel, who arrived from India in 2009, was here on a student visa which has been revoked and he is in the process of applying for a full visa.

Jonathan Morrissey, defending, said Patel’s wife is expecting their first baby in three weeks and he would not be a risk of committing further offences.

Magistrates released Patel on bail with the condition that he does not travel on buses ahead of sentencing at Bournemouth Crown Court on April 19.

Her must also surrender his passport, live and sleep at his address and report to Bournemouth police station daily.