Although this story was reported by the Daily Mail last December, I thought it was worth posting because the victim in this case was just interviewed July 28 on the NBC Today show.
I have a problem with why it took the police and the prosecutors seven months to uncover the true facts in this case.
RAPED THEN JAILED FOR A CRIME SHE DIDN’T COMMIT: WOMAN FREED FROM ARMED ROBBERY NIGHTMARE AFTER PROSECUTORS ADMIT SHE WAS FRAMED BY EX
Mail Online
December 9, 2010
It sounds like a plot line from a Hollywood blockbuster, a rape accusation followed by months behind bars for a crime she didn't commit, all orchestrated by a revenge-seeking ex-lover
But for Seemona Sumasar,35, this nightmare scenario was all too real.
The New Yorker spent seven months in jail after refusing to drop a rape claim against a former lover who framed her for two armed robberies.
Prosecutors, who have now brought perjury and rape charges against her ex-lover, have now admitted that she should never have been stuck behind bars.
The mother of one claims her then boyfriend, Jerry Ramrattan, raped her in his Queens apartment in March 2009.
She reported the alleged crime and was then subjected to months and months of hassle as city health and building inspectors were sent to her Queens restaurant.
She believed the visits were down to her furious ex-boyfriend and his friends but did not realize how far he would go.
In May, Sumasar was arrested and thrown into prison accused of conducting an armed robbery posing as a police officer and holding two people at gunpoint.
Held on a $1million bail she tried to tell officials about the pending rape case - she even had an alibi as she had been at a Connecticut casino when one of the crimes was supposed to have take place – but her pleas fell on deaf ears.
A free woman again, she said today: ‘They acted like I'm just trying to blame somebody else for something I did. They did not want to look into it at all.’
I didn't think I was going to last a day or night there. I cried, I prayed . . . I did everything I could to keep from going crazy.
Her nightmare ended last week when Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice admitted the alleged armed robberies were phony, part of an elaborate framing orchestrated by Ramrattan.
The two robbery ‘victims’ confessed that they had lied and prosecutors filed perjury charges against them and the ex-boyfriend.
The ruthless ex even coached the pair on what to say and how to pick Sumasar out of a lineup, according to Rice.
Ramrattan, 38, was charged with conspiracy and perjury by Rice's office last week.
Accompanied by her lawyer, Sumasar said the bungled case cost her her business, sent her house into near-foreclosure and shattered her family.
Sumasar, who had worked for a decade on Wall Street, owned a franchise restaurant, a Golden Crust bakery, at the time of her arrest.
Her family operated the struggling business for three months while she was in jail, but eventually they had to shut it down, she said.’
She said her daughter, Chiara, had to move out of their Queens home and live temporarily with her father in Brooklyn.
Ramrattan's alleged scheme, according to Sumasar's lawyer Anthony Grandinette, was ‘relatively simple.’
‘You get two people in an isolated area, they call 911, they make the whole thing up, there's no corroboration,’ he fumed.
Sumasar said she is frightened that Ramrattan will make bail, which was set at $500,000 cash.
'I fear for my life if he is released,' she said. 'Clearly he is sick and won't stop at anything -- anything.'
Ramrattan pleaded not guilty last week to perjury and other charges in the Sumasar robbery case and is being held on $500,000 bail.
His attorney did not return repeated telephone messages for comment, but told Newsday last week that there "is no credible evidence" against his client.
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