Here’s a true story of how racial stereotyping can cause pain, even when done with the best of intentions. [LATimes]
In 1992, Kalpesh Vardhan, a UCLA student and the son of Indian immigrants, was found murdered in a parking garage in downtown L.A.
On the morning of Aug. 19, 1992, Kalpesh Vardhan pulled his Toyota Corolla into a tall parking structure on Olive and 8th streets in downtown L.A.
More than seven hours later, a parking lot security guard noticed a body sprawled behind parked vehicles. It looked at first like a transient sleeping.
Vardhan’s body — 5 feet, 5 inches tall and 115 pounds — was partly concealed behind a minivan and his car. His wallet, filled with credit cards, was gone. Left behind was the broken 3-inch blade of a small steak knife.
A few weeks later acting on the tip of a car burglar, the police picks up two transients for questioning. On one of the suspects, the police found a matchbox of an Indian restaurant with a Bangladesh phone number written on it.
The prosecutors concluded that since the matchbox belonged to an Indian restaurant, had a phone number for Bangladesh on it and the victim was Indian, that the matchbox must belong to Kalpesh Vardhan. The defense called it a form of racial profiling but prosecutors were able to convince a jury that since the suspect had this matchbox in his possession, he was the killer.
As it turns out later, Kalpesh did not smoke. He had probably never even been to that restaurant. The number on the matchbox was that of a restaurant employee’s family, the employee was Bangladeshi. Chances that the matchbox belonged to the victim, Kalpesh Vardhan, appeared to be slim.
The suspect was freed in subsequent re-trials. To this day, there are no other clues as to who killed Kalpesh Vardhan. Perhaps, the situation might have been different if the authorities had not concentrated on the matchbox exclusively and looked for other clues.
What do our readers think? Did the authorities do their best or should they have followed other leads? Was their mode of tying the evidence, aka the matchbox, to Kalpesh, a form of racial stereotyping?
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