Tuesday, May 24th 2011, 5:15 PM
An Indian diplomat's daughter got dragged out of a city school in handcuffs despite being innocent - and international law forbidding the arrests of diplomats and their families, the legal papers show.
After a night in jail, charges against the distraught girl were dropped when authorities realized she was wrongly accused of cyberbullying a teacher, her lawyer said.
The senior at John Bowne High School in Flushing, Queens, sobbed, her hands over her face, at a press conference Tuesday when she tried to describe what happened.
"I was very broken down after this," Krittika Biswas, 18, said later, noting that clearing her name helped her get back to school.
"One of my friends asked me, 'Aren't you shameful. You got arrested?' So I was like, 'I didn't do anything,'" said Krittika. Her father, Debashish Biswas, is a vice consul of the Indian Consulate in New York.
After Krittika was held in jail overnight on Feb. 8, the Queens District Attorney dropped all charges, which stemmed from a menacing email sent to a teacher.
City schools took an additional month to clear Krittika of the charges, after she'd already been suspended.
The legal papers, which notify the city of an intent to sue for at least $1.5 million, note another student was later determined to have actually sent the emails and that he was never arrested
"When they accuse someone, they (should) actually get their facts straights. When they accused me, they based it on something they just thought I did," Krittika said.
Her lawyer, Ravi Batra, did an estimated $50,000 worth of work to prove her innocence to the city school, he said.
City Law Department spokeswoman declined to discuss any specifics of the case, releasing a statement instead. "Once we are formally served with the claim, we'll evaluate Ms. Biswas's case thoroughly," it said.
Video by Rafael Martínez Alequín
2 comments:
Such issues should be pursued legally to bring out the truth and deter from repetition.
Such issues should be pursued legally to bring out the truth and deter from repetition.
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