Nicola Thorp was left terrified after realising she had a stalker.
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Over a period of two years, the 34-year-old actress - who is best known for her stint as Nicola Rubinstein on 'Coronation Street' - was stalked by Ravinderjit Dhillon and after he was found guilty in April, she has now opened up about the ordeal and explained that not being informed of his identity amid the investigation led her to believe that he could be any man she saw in public.
Speaking on ITV's 'Good Morning Britain', she told hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls: "You want to know if you're going to be able to take care of yourself if he was to approach you in the street. That was the big thing. My main question was, ‘Would he be able to carry me?’ and that's devastating. Because with these kinds of crimes, when he's kept anonymous, they become every single person that you meet. He was every guy at a bus stop. He was the person at work who looked at me funny.
"He was the guy in the supermarket. He just became everybody. When I got the phone call, saying that he'd been arrested, I was so relieved. I thought, ‘Fantastic, who is he?’ and they said, ‘We can't tell you’"
“I asked, ‘But where does he live, roughly?’ They said, ‘We can’t tell you.’ I said, ‘Do I know him? Is he an ex-partner?’. ‘We can’t tell you anything,’ they said.
Dhillon had used more than 25 online aliases to contact Nicola - who since her time on 'Coronation Street' has carved out a career as a broadcaster with regular appearances on 'This Morning' and TalkTV - and she went on to explain that after finding his name outside of court, she tried looking for him on Facebook and "begged" officers to show her a picture of him.
She added: "For months, I kept begging them, ‘Please, can I just see a photograph of him or [know] his name?’ It was only when I saw his name on the piece of paper outside court, that I saw his name for the first time. I begged them [police], ‘Please can you just show me a photograph of him?’ because he had quite a common name.
"I tried to find him on Facebook.
"They eventually showed me a photograph and said we can only show you here in the police station."
Nicola explained that she ended up stood behind her stalker when they queued to get into the court day and found herself "frozen" to the spot as she finally laid eyes on the main who had "harassed and stalked" her for a number of years.
She said: "It was a few weeks ago at his sentencing that I turned up to court. You have to queue before you go inside and you go through security. You give your name to the security guard as you're going through. I was actually stood behind him in the queue. He gave his name to the security guard at which point I just completely froze because that was him. That's the man who had harassed and stalked me since 2018. And he was right there in front of me.”
The police told 'Good Morning Britain' that the investigation was hampered by the “complex and protracted” process of obtaining information from social media companies in order to prove Ravinderjit was the man behind dozens of chilling messages
However, Nicola went on to claim that the onus lies with men to "change their behaviour" and wants the police to "help the victim" throughout the process.
She said: "It is on men to change their behaviour and also for the police and the authorities to give us the tools to be able to protect ourselves. He had all the power.
"When he had this stalking Protection Order taken out against him, the conditions, his bail conditions were that he wasn't allowed to contact me. And the only person who would know if he had contacted me, was him. How is that right? I just wish the focus wasn’t just on punishing the perpetrator but helping the victim through the process as well.”
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