“The worst time” is finally over for an Indian-origin trucking company owner in the US who was falsely accused of kidnapping a teenager from Ceres, a city in Stanislaus County in California.
Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Ricardo Cordova dismissed the case against Sandeep Singh after his defence attorney submitted surveillance footage from a nearby church that proved that Singh was “factually innocent.''
In June 2018, a 14-year-old girl told the police that a man of Indian descent driving a pickup grabbed her as she walked on a street but she somehow managed to get away.
When the police took her to Mr Singh, she identified him as her ‘kidnapper’ following which he was arrested. Mr Singh has spent the past seven months fighting the felony kidnapping charges.
Deputy District Attorney Erin Schwartz told the judge that after the video surfaced, they interviewed the girl who confessed that the attempted kidnapping never happened and she had lied about the whole ordeal.
“I’m just happy that the truth came out,” Singh told ABC10 shortly after the hearing. “Basically, I think I got my life back.”
While Mr Singh is free to restart his life, the girl‘s case has been referred to the juvenile probation department, since it is an offence to level false allegations.
But given that she is a minor, the outcome may never be known, as everything that goes inside a juvenile court remains confidential.
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