Lina Sinha, the Indian American teacher who was arrested in charge of having sex with a 13-year-old student in 2007, began serving her sentence on July 23. Was it a case of pedophile or was she framed by a wayward lover?
The worst condemnation of Sinha came from Justice Carol Berkman of State Supreme Court in Manhattan during her 2007 sentencing. The judge reportedly remarked: "Miss Sinha is intelligent. She's well educated. She's well raised. She's hard- working. She's beautiful. And she's a predator who lived a lie."
If you did not know the whole story, here it is. It all began when a young officer of NYPD faced charges of assaulting Sinha more than one occasion in 2007. The 24-year-old police officer described in New York Supreme Court a 10-year relationship with his teacher that began when she gave him oral sex when he was a teen. The teacher was none other than Sinha.
Tabloids wrote disgraceful headlines and raunchy stories. Paparazzi chased her for photographs. The case created quite a ripple, then. Sinha, whose family owns several schools in the New York City area, was then a headmistress of one of the family-run schools.
Sinha later told authorities at the time that he had concocted the story about having sex with her as a teen in retaliation after she filed the assault complaint against him.
But, according to prosecutors, Sinha had sex with the teen while he was a student. They said she filed her complaint against the young officer only when he tried to end their relationship in late 2004.
It is reported that a 2004 investigation revealed that from the beginning of June 1996 and continuing for several years, Sinha had sex with the student starting when he was 13 and in eighth grade.
In addition, the investigation discovered that for over a year, beginning in January 2001, she allegedly had sex with another male student, starting when that boy was 12 and in seventh grade.
Sinha was indicted on four counts of third-degree rape, three counts of second-degree rape, 14 counts of third-degree rape, five counts of second-degree sodomy, 36 counts of third-degree sodomy, two -counts of bribing a witness, tampering with physical evidence, endangering the welfare of a child, four counts of criminal impersonation in the second degree, tampering with a witness in the fourth degree, and 10 counts of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree.
Her trial began on February 2007 and in April 2007 she was convicted of sodomy, witness bribery counts, several counts of criminal impersonation and falsly reporting an incident.
According to a report in The New York Times, the relation began with a kiss. The victim’s team had lost an athletic competition and as captain, he was upset. Sinha consoled him with a kiss, he reported as saying. "I was very sad, and Lina kissed me on the mouth," he said.
The article quoted prosecutors as saying that from there it progressed to acts of oral sex she per- formed on him when he was 14, and intercourse - as a birthday present - when he turned 15.
When the boy went to college at 17, prosecutors reportedly said, he began to distance himself from Sinha, and she consoled herself with a "dalliance" with a second student. The second affair began with a hug on a ski trip, prosecutors said, and within a month, Sinha had sex with him. He was 12 and she 34, the prosecutors said.
In his testimony, the officer also claimed that Sinha had seduced him at a vulnerable time, when he was angry at his mother for divorcing his father.
When the prosecutor asked if he remembered Sinha telling him to keep their relationship a secret, he replied yes. "I recall the sub stance of the conversation being not to tell anybody. She can get into trouble," the New York Times quoted him as saying.
Sinha graduated in 1987 with an undergraduate degree from Columbia College. She earned two master's degrees from Columbia University and an advanced certificate from New York University. She went on to become a teacher, and spent her free time staying active and volunteering.
Sinha’s personal website described her as an avid runner, skier and tennis player who participated in the New York City half marathon.
She has also worked to choreograph Bollywood dances at the annual India Day parade held in New York City.
However, Sinha's defence claimed she was a "caring, competent, highly devoted teacher and principal" who tutored the student and began a sexual relationship with him only when he was over 17 and in college.
The defence did not dispute that Sinha had filed assault complaints against her former student but said she was motivated by jealousy, because he had started seeing another woman and had become physically abusive toward Sinha.
"She was hurt in a very deep and profound way," the defence attorney told the jury. "She was suffering the immeasurable anguish of a love affair gone bad." He also said that the second student, when initially interviewed by investigators, denied a sexual relationship but changed his story after his mother hired a lawyer to sue Sinha and the Montessori schools for damages.
"How is it he waited nine years before he told a single soul?" the defence reportedly asked in his closing argument, according to the New York Times. "There is no DNA. There is no independent evidence. There is no prompt complaint. There is no scientific proof."
The juries, however, were not convinced with the argument.
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