How Krittika Biswas was wrongly accused of cyberbullying

The daughter of an Indian diplomat has filed an official notice that she will bring a $1.5-million lawsuit against the City of New York for “unwarranted arrest and unlicensed detention.” Krittika Biswas, 18, whose father is a Vice Consul General of India based in its New York embassy, was accused of sending sexually explicit and threatening emails to a calculus teacher at John Bowne High School in Queens, where Biswas is a senior. When the teacher received another round of threatening emails in early February, Biswas was reportedly called to the principal’s office, where she was accused of drafting the offending emails, which the school said constituted “cyberbullying.” When she denied sending the emails, Biswas was illegally handcuffed, arrested, and taken to the police station without cause, according to documents her attorney filed with the city government. During a press conference held on Wednesday, Biswas broke down in tears as she spoke about her experience. “One of my friends recently asked me, aren’t you shameful you got arrested? I was like, I didn’t do anything,” she said. [caption id=“attachment_15736” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Krittika Biswas was illegally handcuffed, arrested, and taken to the police station without cause. PTI”]  [/caption] Biswas’ attorney, Ravi Batra, said that following her arrest, she was further mistreated at the police precinct: Her handcuffs were secured so tightly that they caused pain and swelling, and she was not allowed to use the bathroom. In all, Biswas was detained by the police for about 28 hours even though there was “no evidence to support a claim against Krittika Biswas,” according to Batra. India Consul General Prabhu Dayal agreed that the scenario was troubling. “She was arrested based on a complaint where there was not real evidence,” Dayal told Firstpost. “The whole thing was not in keeping with norms of justice.” Batra, the lawyer, also argued in documents submitted to the city that the police violated Biswas’ diplomatic immunity as the daughter of a vice consul general, and the department failed to notify the consulate about the arrest, according to international norms. “It was a breach of international covenants, of the Vienna Convention on consular relations,” Batra told Firstpost. “I was troubled by that, and by the issue of diplomatic immunity. I’m an American citizen but I left India when 7. I love the law and America is an idea, an ideal. In the largest sense, I felt I had to defend the American justice system to India.” The District Attorney of Queens, which is representing the New York Police Department, could not be reached for comment. The City Law Department, which represents the New York City Department of Education, said through a spokesperson that “once we are formally served with the claim, we’ll evaluate Ms Biswas’ case thoroughly.” Since Biswas’ case involves government agencies and employees, she must first file a notice of her intent to sue the city, which she did on May 6. She is then permitted to officially file a lawsuit six months after she provides notice, which Batra said he intended to do on Biswas’ behalf. He added that with the amount of evidence he’s already collected, the case will be a “slam dunk.” The Twilight Zone According to the 91-page document that Batra filed with the city to notify it of the impending lawsuit, Biswas has been the target of racist and malicious allegations by Principal Howard Kwait and honours calculus teacher Jamie Kim-Ross. In a public statement, Biswas’ attorney likened the teen’s experience to Alice in Wonderland and the Twilight Zone. It all seemed to start last fall, when Biswas requested  two weeks off to travel to India with her family. According to a written statement Kim-Ross filed with the New York City Department of Education in mid-February, the teacher began to receive obscene and threatening emails soon after he told Biswas that she was in danger of failing her class. The school administration traced the email to a building where several John Bowne students lived, but because a gym teacher received a similar obscene email and Biswas had both teachers, she became the suspected source of the email. Kim-Ross also noted that the offending emails involved French swear words, and Biswas speaks French. A few months later, after Kim-Ross declined to write Biswas a letter of recommendation for college, the teacher reported that she was again receiving threatening emails from the same email address. “These emails have made me afraid for my personal safety, compromised my ability to perform my job, and created anxiety within my family,” Kim-Ross wrote. Kwait and Kim-Ross did not respond to requests for comment. The school took disciplinary action on February 8 by arresting Biswas during her second-period class. She was detained in a police holding cell until 2:30pm the next day. After the consul general interceded with the assistance of Batra, however, the district attorney’s office dropped the charges and expunged the arrest. But the day following her release, Biswas received word that the school was taking actions to suspend her. A suspension hearing before the New York City Department of Education was held a week later, and as part of the defence she built to fight her suspension, Biswas submitted documentation from a computer forensics expert who showed that the emails had come from a different internet service provider than the one that Biswas used at home. Biswas also provided affidavits from friends who said that she was at the mall when the latest round of offending emails was sent. The school eventually dropped the disciplinary charges against Biswas. But in yet another turn of events, another student named Shang Ming confessed to the emails in mid-March. He was immediately suspended, but no criminal charges were lodged against him, which has attorney Batra outraged. “He’s a young fool and young people make mistakes,” Batra said. “But he owned up to it and he didn’t lie and he’s not a threat to society. I agree with the school in what they did with him, but here’s the punchline: If the guilty person is only treated with suspension and no criminal charges, how dare they arrest an actually innocent person, handcuff them, prevent them from going to the bathroom? It’s a wholesale massacre of the Vienna Convention. How dare they do this?” Batra suspects that the reason that Ming, who is Chinese-American, wasn’t charged is because Kim-Ross is also of East Asian descent, and she has a preferential bias toward him. “Defendant-Respondent Kim-Ross overtly favoured students of Oriental-Asian ethnic backgrounds, to the detriment of other students, including Krittika Biswas who is Indian,” Batra alleged in case documents. Making amends Batra said that he believes the City government could begin to take steps to make amends to the Biswases and other Indian diplomats. “At the end of the day we are talking about elemental fairness,” he said. “I’m embarrassed as a New Yorker, and I’m embarrassed for having to stand up for this system overseas because of these two fools [Kwait and Kim-Ross].” He added, “It matters that we don’t insult a friend. The same rule applies in comity of nations. When there’s an unintended insult, you have to step up to the plate and make amends.” But India Consul General Dayal says the flap, while certainly a dramatic and troubling one, isn’t likely to affect government relations. “It does not mean the tenor of US-India relations is disturbed,” he said. “It was done by local officials. It’s an aberration.” But what if you’re not as influential Krittika Biswas, what would you do ?