A Guyanese woman was last Friday released after spending almost seven harrowing months in a US jail on charges of robbery which are now believed to be an elaborate scheme concocted by her ex-lover whom she had accused of raping her.
As 35-year-old Seemona Sumasar was being released from jail her ex-boyfriend, 38-year-old Jerry Ramrattan was being arraigned on second-
degree perjury, falsifying business records and other charges, Newsday in New York has reported.
According to the report, in the 14 hours that Sumasar spent in a police interrogation room last May, she said, she could think of only one reason she could have been arrested: her vengeful ex-boyfriend.
The woman said her arrest on charges that she had dressed up as a police officer and robbed three people at gunpoint was the final desperate act of her ex who was about to go to trial on charges that he raped her in March 2009.
“I knew the fact I was in handcuffs had to do with him,” Sumasar told a news conference.
Sumasar was released from jail after two people who had claimed she robbed them admitted they had concocted their stories after Ramrattan promised to pay them to do so, prosecutors had said.
For his part Ramrattan’s lawyer, James Kilduff of Brooklyn, has said his client denies that he has any connection to the false witnesses in the case or that he played any part in any false allegations.
The three people that prosecutors say posed as Sumasar’s victims have pleaded not guilty to perjury and other charges.
Sumasar, who has moved out of state, said the months she spent in the Nassau County jail, separated from her 12-year-old daughter, were almost unbearable. Nassau District Judge Francis Ricigliano on May 23 had ordered her held on US$500,000 bond or US$500,000 cash bail.
“I didn’t think I was going to last a day or a night there,” she told reporters. “I did everything I could to keep from going crazy and letting it ruin me.”
According to the report the woman’s lawyer, Anthony Grandinette of Mineola, has said prosecutors should have seen red flags in the case earlier. The defence had presented them with surveillance photos of Sumasar at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn., at the time that one of the robberies allegedly happened in Inwood.
Nassau Executive District Attorney Sheryl Anania said her office did everything they could.
Prosecutors had two witnesses making detailed complaints against Sumasar. And in a bizarre twist, police who reported to one of the locations of the fake robberies actually spotted a car that matched her car’s description. When they tried to stop it, it fled, Anania said, adding that the incident has never been explained.
As for the casino photos, Anania said Sumasar is wearing sunglasses and is hard to identify.
Anania said she and her assistant presented their case to the grand jury. When the panel indicted Sumasar, they decided to move forward with the case.
Sumasar says she lost much during her time in jail. Her business, a Golden Krust bakery in Queens, has been shut down, and her home went into foreclosure.
“I have to try to start all over again, because I have nothing left,” she told reporters.
