A professor at a community college in Connecticut is in hot water for making false accusations about a state trooper who stopped her for an unsafe lane change. Minati Roychoudhuri claims she was “unfairly and racially profiled by the trooper as evidenced by him asking her if she spoke English.”
Roychoudhuri wrote a letter to the commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, demanding that the infraction be dropped and that the officer be reprimanded in some way. According to the letter, obtained by WTIC-TV, Roychoudhuri wrote: “The officer did not give me any reason as to why he had stopped me. His asking if I could speak English shows that he had racially profiled me.” That letter was also sent to a senator and state legislator.
But when the internal affairs unit looked into it further, they discovered that the driver made up the claims. They listened to the dash cam audio of the stop and nowhere on the recording does it back up her claim that the officer did not state why she was being ticketed.
Almost immediately the trooper is heard saying, “There’s that big gore area with white lines painted across it and you cut in front of it, in front of me, thinking it’s a lane or something. You have to wait until it’s a dotted white line.”
He’s also never heard on the audio asking if she speaks English. The trooper was exonerated on all charges.
The Connecticut State Police Union called for a public apology from Roychoudhuri, and asked her employer that she be “held accountable for her illegal and malicious actions.”
Roychoudhuri, who teaches diversity at the college, was subsequently arrested for giving a false statement in the second degree. She turned herself in and was released on $1,000 bond.
