A three-judge panel of the US Second Circuit Court ruled that the case filed by Krittika Biswas, who was jailed in 2011 for a day, will not be dismissed since the arguments made by the defendants New York City and members of the police department are "without merit".
The defendants sought to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Biswas on the grounds of "qualified immunity."
Biswas had filed the lawsuit seeking 1.5 million dollars in damages for her wrongful imprisonment and suspension from school. She was detained and arrested in February 2011 on the grounds that she had sent "offensive and sexually threatening" emails to her teachers in Queens's John Browne High School. Biswas is now in India.
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A US federal judge had in September last year also refused to dismiss in its entirety the lawsuit, as sought by the the city, NYPD and New York City Department of Education. The city had then appealed against the decision.
The lawsuit details the circumstances that led to Biswas being handcuffed and her forced imprisonment for approximately 28 hours "for nothing."
Biswas was "forced to be processed through the criminal justice system, and spent over 24 hours in jail without being allowed to meet her parents or visited by senior Indian diplomats. All of this occurred, despite her actual innocence as this was a case of mistaken identity," it said.
The school and police authorities "selected Krittika for false arrest and detention, malicious prosecution, suspension and disciplinary treatment due to her race and ethnicity as an Indian of South east Asian decent," it said.
Batra said a jury trial in the case would serve to expose systemic flaws in the country's public school system's disciplinary process that put 1.1 million kids at "risk of being falsely charged, falsely arrested and accepting undeserved punishment as they can't afford the fight we are fighting" on Biswas's behalf.