Ajay Dev was freed after spending 16 years in prison after he was convicted of the sexual assault of his adopted daughter
A California man has had his 378-year prison sentence overturned after a judge ruled that there was evidence that his adopted daughter fabricated the sexual assault allegations against him in order to punish him.
Ajay Dev, 58, had already spent 16 years behind bars after he was convicted on 76 counts of sexual assault on a minor and related charges in 2009. He was released last week.
Dev, an engineer and Nepali immigrant, was visiting Nepal in 1998 when he and his wife adopted 15-year-old Sapna Dev. The teenager was brought to live with the couple in Davis, California.
The court heard that in 2004, Sapna accused Dev of causing her to break up with her boyfriend. She told police that Ajay Dev had sex with her two or three times a week for around four years until she moved out of his home, the judge said.
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Four witnesses testified at a recent hearing that Sapna Dev had told them that her accusations against him were lies or were motivated by her anger at him, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Superior Court Judge Janene Beronio said one witness testified that Sapna Dev told him she fabricated the sexual assault claims because she “was determined to return to the United States and needed to use the criminal charges to do that.”
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“I have read the court material for seven years and believe there is a substantial likelihood that he didn’t do this,” Beronio said.
A hearing is set to take place in June for Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig to decide whether to retry Dev.
Advocate Patricia Purcell praised the outcome. “We have known from the beginning that Ajay Dev was wrongfully convicted,” Purcell told the Chronicle. “Judge Beronio was the first judge to really look closely at the evidence and read every document.”
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