A STRETCH limo driver who raped a teenage virgin in Hounslow has been warned to expect a substantial prison sentence.

Kevin Kalyan was found guilty by a jury last Thursday after denying the attack.

The incident, which occurred more than three years ago, received wide publicity for the police hunt at the time, but it was a routine DNA check which finally nailed Kalyan.

When the 17-year-old victim, who lives in nearby Isleworth, reported the rape the next day in February 2002, the police thought they were looking for a white man of about 38 years driving a white saloon car.

Kalyan, who lives in Ilford, is part Asian, was 22 at the time and was driving a white stretch limo when he picked the girl up outside Shannon's Irish pub in Hounslow High Street.

He was arrested three years later having been stopped in Swindon for not wearing a seat-belt. A computer check revealed he was wanted for rape.

The indignant Kalyan gave an expletive-filled interview to police claiming the girl had flagged him down for sex. He admitted he had "done it before".

"Yeah," he told police, "in Leicester Square, you get birds coming up to the car and you end up having sex with them you talk to any limo driver it happens all the time."

But the youngster's story was very different. She had been for a night out with friends and called a minicab firm which told her there would be a "bit of a wait".

She waited. The car drew up and she thought it was her cab, prosecutor Constance Briscoe told Isleworth Crown Court.

She got into the back but before her friends could get in, Kalyan drove off. He went round the corner to School Road, where he got into the back and raped her.

When he got out to return to the driver's seat, she escaped and ran back to her friends.

"She was crying and she was bleeding and she told her best friend she had been raped."

She was later examined by Dr Anna Lewandowska, who gave the court graphic details of horrendous genital injuries which, she said, were consistent with sexual assault.

She said: "Just looking and counting the injuries, this is most likely that sexual intercourse was forced without consent."

Kalyan, a married father-of-two, now aged 25, told the court: "We had a very flirtatious conversation. The next thing I knew she was in the back. She didn't ask for a cab and I didn't say I was a cab. We were all over each other. We were going to drive round the corner to have sex in that car.

"I centrally locked the car. We were both there for the same reason we had a fondle and we had sex and then we picked up her friend and I drove them home."

Kalyan was remanded in custody for reports and will be sentenced in November.

Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson said "custody is inevitable".