Guyanese rape victim freed of charges in N.Y.

By North American Correspondent

The New York Daily News has reported that a Guyanese businesswoman in Queens, N.Y., ‘has been to hell and back’ and it all started when she allegedly accused a former boyfriend, also a Guyanese, of rape. Prosecutors in Long Island say he framed her for armed robbery.

Seemona Sumasar, 35, spent nearly seven months in jail for a crime she never committed, the Nassau County District Attorney now admits. Prosecutors were forced to set her free when they discovered the robberies were an elaborate fiction. She is now suing the police while her former boyfriend, Jerry Ramrattan will face the full force of the law.

Ramrattan was charged as the mastermind of the scheme to frame Sumasar and he was convicted last week. He was desperate to get her to drop the sex attack charges she filed in September 2009 after the two split up, officials said. So he paid two pals to concoct the armed robbery lies, authorities say. “As much as I knew I was 100% innocent, I didn’t know if I would see the light of day again,” she related.

Sumasar said cops thought she was crazy when she proclaimed her innocence and recounted the months of hell the spurned Ramrattan put her through. “They acted like I’m just trying to blame somebody else for something I did,” Sumasar told reporters. “They did not want to look at it at all.”

Before the Far Rockaway, Queens woman was arrested in May 2010 by Long Island cops and held on $1 million bail, she says, “Ramrattan, 38, was behind a massive campaign of harassment and intimidation”.

She suspects he filed a series of anonymous complaints that prompted health and building inspectors to descend on her Golden Crust bakeshop which eventually closed after she landed in jail. Her home also went into foreclosure. “The most painful part was being away from her 12-year-old daughter, Chiara”, he said.

“Once my office became aware of the new evidence, we worked quickly to release Sumasar and to arrest the defendant,” Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said in a statement.

Ramrattan, of East Elmhurst, Queens, is being held on $750,000 bail. He pleaded not guilty to perjury charges filed by Rice and to rape charges filed by Queens prosecutors.

“This was a brazen attempt to undermine the fair administration of justice,” said Queens Assistant District Attorney Frank Di Gaetano.