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https://www.innocencecanada.com/exonerations
Dinesh Kumar was 44 years until he got exonerated. He spend 19 years of his life in shame, getting dirty looks and abandoned by many from his religious community.

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Dinesh with his wife Veena in 2008 when his case was about to be acquitted.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/crown-seeks-to-overturn-mans-conviction-in-his-sons-death/article562710/

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Smith was found out to make questionable conclusions of foul play in 20 cases, which 13 of them (including Dinesh Kumar) had resulted in criminal convictions. In 2007 the Ontario Government ordered a public inquiry about his practises. The inquiry found out that he had actively misled his superiors and made false and misleading statements in court and exaggerated his expertise in trials.

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On a typical case, he might have to decide whether a child had been shaken to death or accidentally fallen from a highchair.

Dr. Charles Smith was once considered top-notch in his field of forensic child pathology. In 1999, a Fifth Estate documentary singled him out as one of four Canadians with this rare expertise.

For 24 years, Smith worked at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. In the hospital's pediatric forensic pathology unit, he conducted more than 1,000 child autopsies.

But Smith no longer practises pathology. An Ontario coroner's inquiry reviewed 45 child autopsies in which Smith had concluded the cause of death was either homicide or criminally suspicious.

The coroner's review found that Smith made questionable conclusions of foul play in 20 of the cases - 13 of which had resulted in criminal convictions. After the review's findings were made public in April 2007, Ontario's government ordered a public inquiry into the doctor's practices.

That inquiry, led by Justice Stephen Goudge and concluding in October 2008, found that Smith "actively misled" his superiors, "made false and misleading statements" in court and exaggerated his expertise in trials.

Far from an expert in forensic child pathology, "Smith lacked basic knowledge about forensic pathology," wrote Goudge in the inquiry report.

"Smith was adamant that his failings were never intentional," Goudge wrote. "I simply cannot accept such a sweeping attempt to escape moral responsibility."

Two years later, the Ontario government announced compensation for families affected by Smith's mistakes.

Individuals will be entitled to a maximum of $250,000 each. A child of someone wrongfully accused who was removed from the family home as a result is entitled to up to $25,000.

A family member directly affected by a relative's involvement in the criminal justice system is entitled to up to $12,500. Legal costs incurred by the wrongly accused may also be reimbursed.

Acted more like a prosecutor

Some have accused Smith of taking on a role larger than pathologist. The lawyer for Brenda Waudby said he was on a crusade and acted more like a prosecutor. Waudby was convicted in the murder of her daughter after Smith analyzed the case.

A pubic-like hair found on her daughter disappeared during Smith's investigation. It was discovered he had kept the hair in his office before police found it five years later. In the end, the charges against Waudby were dropped and the child's babysitter was convicted.

Smith said he had a passion for uncovering the truth in child deaths. The Ontario pathologist told media lampooning him he had "a thing against people who hurt children." He welled up when speaking about a mother looking for the cause of her baby's death.

Smith had been in search of his own personal truths. He was born in a Toronto Salvation Army hospital where he was put up for adoption three months later. After years of looking for his biological mother, he called her on her 65th birthday. But she refused to take his call.

Smith's adoptive family moved often. His father's job in the Canadian Forces took them throughout Canada and to Germany. He attended high school in Ottawa, and graduated from medical school at the University of Saskatchewan in 1975.

Sick Kids tenure

Hired by Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children in 1979, Smith worked in surgery for a year and then moved on to pathology training. A pathologist studies diseases and illnesses by assessing matter such as cells, tissues, organs and fluids. Pathologists also examine biopsy material, and give a subsequent diagnosis.

When it comes to autopsy reports, the field of pathology can be a subjective one. It's based on research and opinion, and it's especially controversial in Canada, where there is no formal training or certification process. Only a handful of practitioners in Ontario are entrusted with the job - and they've learned by doing.

With child victims, forensic analysis is rarely cut and dried. It can take an infant up to 24 hours to die of a shaking incident, which is a crime that doesn't leave evidence the way a regular killing might.

After his initial training at Sick Kids, as the Toronto hospital is known, Smith began conducting child autopsies in 1981. He started with children who had died of accidental and natural causes. By the late '90s, Smith saw more forensic child cases than any other pathologist across the country.

Smith's unit used arrest warrants to reinvestigate cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). He oversaw the autopsies of exhumed babies that led to new murder charges.

In one such case, Smith appeared before a court in the death of six-month-old Sara Podniewicz. He concluded she had been dead for up to 15 hours before her parents reported the death. The parents had told a 911 operator the girl had died just moments before. Smith's analysis led to second-degree murder charges.

In December 2009, Sherry Sherrett-Robinson was acquitted of killing her son whom Smith had concluded died of asphyxia a decade earlier. Smith suggested Sherrett-Robinson's son, Joshua, suffered a skull fracture and neck hemorrhages. Ontario's chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Pollanen, however, told the Ontario Court of Appeal that he did not find a skull fructure and noted the neck hemorrhages were caused during the autopsy process.

First doubts

In 1991, a family in Timmins, Ont., was the first to raise questions about Smith's work. He had concluded their one-year-old baby had died from being shaken. The child had been under the care of a babysitter who said the baby had fallen down stairs.

In court, experts challenged Smith's opinion, which had resulted in the babysitter's charge of manslaughter. The judge in the case stated Smith should have taken other causes into consideration.

Once the most prolific pathologist, Smith began getting a reputation for late cases, and his disorderly desk produced samples that had gone missing.

In 2002, he received a caution from the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons. The college said he was being "overly dogmatic" and had a "tendency towards overstatement."

In June 2005, Dr. Barry McLellan, Ontario's chief coroner, started the review of 45 child autopsies conducted by Smith between 1991 and 2002. The review, released in April 2007, found that Smith had made mistakes in 20 cases involving the deaths of children. The review cast doubt on criminal convictions in 13 of the cases.

"I am very surprised with the overall results of the review, and concerned," McLellan said. "In a number of cases, the reviewers felt that Dr. Smith had provided an opinion regarding the cause of death that was not reasonably supported by the materials available for review."

The chief coroner said the results of the review were being shared with defence and Crown attorneys involved in all of the relevant criminal cases.

After resigning from Sick Kids in 2005, Smith accepted a pathology position in Saskatoon. He was fired after three months. A tribunal later reinstated him, but without a licence, Smith was unable to practise.

Smith told media his marriage ended in light of stress from the highly publicized events. He had lived with his wife and two children on a farm north of Newmarket, Ont.

As a member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Smith says he has been fuelled by his life's purpose - finding out the truth for parents who have lost babies.

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Dr. Charles Smith: The man behind the public inquiry | CBC News

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Dr. Charles Smith was once considered top-notch in his field of forensic child pathology. But Smith no longer practises pathology. An Ontario coroner's inquiry reviewed 45 child autopsies in which Smith had concluded the cause of death was either homicide or criminally suspicious.

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John Chipman is the author of the book “Death in the Family”. He investigated Charles Smith’s work and brought the failure of a justice system in to a daylight. Dinesh Kumar was one the victims of this failure.

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John Chipman is a journalist, author, and documentarian. In 2007, while working at the CBC, he became interested in Charles Smith - Ontario's top pediatric forensic pathologist in the 1990s - and the families who'd been irreparably damaged by Smith's mistakes. Here, in the opening of his book Death in the Family, Chipman writes about what impelled him to look further into Smith's time in the Office of the Chief Coroner and the repercussions it had.

It was October 2007, and I was driving home from work. CBC's World at Six was on the radio, and one of the top stories was about William Mullins-Johnson, who had spent more than 11 years in prison after being given a life sentence for molesting and murdering his four-year-old niece, Valin. Bill was one of the many victims of disgraced pediatric pathologist Charles Smith, and that cool autumn day he'd been back in court, where a panel of appeal judges had quashed his conviction and acquitted him of a crime that never occurred.

The story of Dr. Charles Smith's incompetence and negligence had been building for almost eight years by then, and while I knew the broad strokes, I had yet to connect with it in a meaningful way. Once the top pediatric forensic pathologist in Ontario and arguably the country, Smith had used his arrogance and guile in court to mask his incompetence on the job, and at least 20 people were wrongly accused or convicted because of his mistakes. It was a huge story, but the scope of the misery Smith had helped create didn't hit me until I heard that news report about Bill Mullins-Johnson.

Bill Mullins (the name he goes by now) had been living at his brother Paul's home in Sault Ste. Marie at the time of Valin's death. He and his brother were close. Bill was babysitting the three children of Paul and his partner, Kim Lariviere, the night Valin died.

The autopsy was done by a local pathologist, Bhubendra Rasaiah, who determined that Valin had been strangled to death. She had extensive bruising, including marks around her neck. Her anus was enlarged. A local pediatrician, Patricia Zehr, said the child had been sexually abused - the worst abuse she had ever seen. Smith consulted on the case from Toronto, co-authoring a supplementary report stating the child was being sodomized at the time of her death.

Initially, Paul didn't believe his brother was capable of something so horrific. He was a caring uncle, and the three children - six-year-old Jean, four-year-old Valin, and two-year-old John - adored him. But as the police, the Crown, and medical experts laid out their evidence at Bill's trial, Paul's faith started to waver. And when the jury said that word - guilty - Paul's younger brother was dead to him.

But Bill knew that he was not responsible for Valin's death. And he could think of only one other adult male who had been near Valin that night: his brother. Initially, Bill couldn't believe it either; he was sure there must have been some mistake. But as the Crown built its case at trial, as medical expert after medical expert took the stand, his faith also started to waver. And by the time he was convicted, Bill was convinced he'd be doing time for a crime his brother had committed.

A deep, visceral hatred took hold of the two brothers, and it consumed them. Paul sank into drug and alcohol abuse. His relationship with Kim collapsed. She left him, taking their two surviving children with her. Bill continued to maintain his innocence, and the penal system held it against him. His appeal was denied. He considered suicide.

And then, more than 10 years into his sentence, Bill received a visit from David Bayliss, a lawyer with the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (now Innocence Canada). Bayliss told him he was reinvestigating the case - he believed Bill was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. And he thought he might be able to prove it.

Convinced he already knew the answer, Bill asked Bayliss who he thought had killed Valin. Bayliss's response could not have been more shocking. He did not think anyone had murdered Bill's niece. He believed she had died of natural causes.

The bruising that Rasaiah had seen during the autopsy was the result of blood pooling after the child's death. The signs of strangulation were caused during the autopsy itself. And indications of sexual abuse were part of the body's natural post-mortem process. The child's anus wasn't enlarged because she'd been sodomized; it enlarged as the muscles around it relaxed after death.

New medical experts found no evidence of foul play.

The Ontario Court of Appeal set aside Bill's first-degree murder conviction and entered an acquittal in its place.

"[The medical evidence] had my brother thinking that I killed his little girl. [And it] had me thinking that he killed his little girl because I knew I didn't kill her," Bill told the court at his appeal hearing in 2007.

The family would never know exactly why or how Valin had died.

The radio report included Bill's statement at his appeal, and it hit me like a bag of bricks. His story was almost biblical: two brothers turned against each other, each convinced the other had committed an unspeakable crime, only to realize years later that the crime had never happened.

Six weeks earlier, late in the summer of 2007, the courts had overturned another miscarriage of justice. It had taken a last-minute reprieve to save 14-year-old Steven Truscott from the gallows in 1959, when he was scheduled to hang for the murder of his classmate Lynne Harper. Truscott's death sentence was commuted to life in prison, and he spent a decade behind bars. His case became one of Canada's most famous wrongful convictions, but almost 50 years went by before the Court of Appeal for Ontario finally overturned his conviction. That was big news, but it was the story that followed that stuck with me: the one about Lynne Harper's family, who said they were still convinced Truscott was guilty.

Who could blame them? They'd spent half a century believing one thing. It would be hard for them to concede that all their blame and hatred had been misplaced. But the Harper family could turn away from the truth; they could believe whatever they wanted, and it wouldn't matter. It wasn't as if Truscott had been a part of their day-to-day lives.

Paul Johnson didn't have that option. Bill was his brother; there would be no turning away from the injustice he'd suffered. The two brothers would have to accept that their family was victimized twice, and it would be up to them to rebuild their shattered relationship.

I was working as a documentary maker with the CBC at the time, and I spent a lot of time with Bill and Paul and their families that fall, researching and reporting their story. The miscarriage of justice and Bill's lost years in prison were easy to appreciate, but the brothers' anguish went deeper. While Bill's wrongful conviction had rightly received most of the media attention, he was far from the only victim. Not only had Paul lost his daughter, but his faith and trust in his younger brother were stolen as well. That decade of hatred created an enormous chasm, but at least Paul had their shared history to help him rebuild their relationship. His children had nothing. Valin's older sister, Jean, grew up believing her uncle Billy was the monster who killed Valin. She could not remember him as anything else. Believing her uncle guilty was essential; it was her only way of making sense of Valin's death. It took her years even to consider another possibility.

Bill's ordeal had begun with his niece's sudden, unexplained death. But like all the cases involving Smith, that tragedy was only the beginning. Because of the accusations and investigations and trauma that quickly engulfed them, Bill and his family never had a chance to do the most important thing: grieve Valin's death.

Of course, it took more than a single disgraced pathologist to cause this miscarriage of justice. For years Smith's reputation had shielded him from criticism. But when it finally began to crumble, attention was diverted from everyone else involved in Bill's case. No one other than Smith was ever reprimanded or disciplined. Rasaiah continued working at the same Sault Ste. Marie hospital. Zehr continued her practice as a pediatrician.

As I investigated Bill's case, I kept thinking: this is only one story. Charles Smith and the system that enabled him were responsible for so many more. Whose stories were those?

In June 2005, the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario ordered a review of all the criminally suspicious deaths and homicides that Smith helped investigate in the 1990s. In 1992, he had assumed his position as the inaugural chief pathologist at the newly created Ontario Pediatric Forensic Pathology Unit, at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, a position he held until he was suspended a decade later. The review examined 45 cases; it found problems with 20. Thirteen of those had involved convictions. Shortly after those findings were announced in April 2007, the Ontario Government called a public inquiry to examine Smith's problematic cases and how systemic failures had contributed to the mistakes he made. (Smith worked as a pediatric pathologist for a decade before taking over the SickKids forensic unit. A subsequent review of that period of his career found another four problematic cases he'd worked on that ended with criminal convictions. Smith didn't respond to my request to speak with him directly for this book.) The Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario is commonly called the Goudge Inquiry, after its chair, Justice Stephen Goudge.

Twenty cases are too many to examine properly in a single book. Most could carry a book on their own. But they break down into three distinct groups. The first are wrongful accusations: cases in which parents or caregivers were investigated but charges were withdrawn or never laid, or in which the accused was acquitted at trial - cases in which the justice system ostensibly worked. The second are wrongful plea deals, in which suspects facing murder charges felt their only option was to plead to a lesser charge even though they had done nothing wrong. And the third are wrongful convictions, like Bill Mullins-Johnson's, in which the accused maintain their innocence and are sentenced to life in prison.

As I started researching this book, I wondered if anyone had got away with murder because Smith's involvement - as his career came to a crashing end - ultimately undermined a legitimate prosecution. Were any cases unduly tarnished because Smith had presented evidence? After all, he didn't get all his cases wrong. There wasone such case, in which Smith's personal and professional failings led to the exact thing he was trying so fervently to prevent: the people responsible for a child's death getting away with it.

At least that's what it looked like initially. But after a year of investigating the case, I'm no longer sure. Smith, along with world-class lawyers and pathologists, might have got that case wrong too. And in a cruel twist, the two parents at the centre of it - parents I initially thought got away with murder - may be the biggest victims of all, forever living under a cloud of suspicion they have no way of legally escaping.

From Death in the Family, by John Chipman. Published by Doubleday Canada. Copyright © John Chipman, 2017. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

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Death in the family: The story of disgraced doctor Charles Smith and the families he destroyed | TVO.org

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John Chipman is a journalist, author, and documentarian. In 2007, while working at the CBC, he became interested in Charles Smith - Ontario's top pediatric forensic pathologist in the 1990s - and the families who'd been irreparably damaged by Smith's mistakes.

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Smit was “like a God” inside the courtrooms. He was once highly regarded chief forensic pathologist in Ontario. He actively misled the Court in many cases. He was stripped off his medical license in 2011. Investigations around his suspicious practises allowed Dinesh Kumar and many others to be exonerated. His false testimonies finally led him to lose his license to practise.

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TORONTO - The trail of devastation left by a once acclaimed forensic pathologist wound its way yet again through Ontario's top court Monday with the exoneration of a mother wrongly convicted of manslaughter on the basis of his evidence.

The brief hearing, which set aside Maria Shepherd's guilty plea in the death of her three-year-old stepdaughter in 1991, came after Crown and defence said Dr. Charles Smith had made numerous errors in the case.

"Charles Smith was like a god," Shepherd said in explaining her plea. "Who am I? I'm just a little person."

Smith was once Ontario's highly regarded chief forensic pathologist. His opinions on the causes of death, considered unassailable, were frequently the underpinning of convictions that, like Shepherd's, were ultimately found to have been a miscarriage of justice.

"Try having your heart ripped out and someone squeezing it right in front of your face."

His stellar reputation, however, began unravelling about a decade ago amid questions over the case of William Mullins-Johnson, convicted of sodomizing and suffocating his four-year-old niece. Independent forensic experts would later conclude Smith was wrong to have implicated Mullins-Johnson, who spent 12 years in prison, or even to have decided a crime had occurred.

An initial review uncovered evidence of errors in 20 of 45 autopsies Smith had done over a 10-year period starting in the early 1990s. Thirteen resulted in criminal charges. The review prompted the Ontario government to call a public inquiry, which unravelled a depressing history of Smith's serious errors, including his catastrophic misinterpretation of findings.

In one notorious case, Smith concluded a mother had stabbed her seven-year-old girl to death when it turned out to have been a dog mauling. In another case, Tammy Marquardt spent 14 years behind bars after she was convicted in 1995 of killing her two-year-old son.

"Try having your heart ripped out and someone squeezing it right in front of your face," Marquardt said at the time.
'Actively misled' the courts
Critics said Smith, who started working at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto in 1979, had been on a crusade.

At the inquiry, the doctor argued he had been poorly trained and woefully ignorant of the workings of the justice system despite his star status.

In his report in 2008, Justice Stephen Goudge concluded that an arrogant Smith had deliberately dodged attempts to call him to account and "actively misled" the courts and his superiors.

"He achieved the status of a leading expert in the field in large part because there was no one who had the training, experience and expertise to take him on," Goudge said.

"I do want to make it very clear to you that I am profoundly sorry for the role that I played."

Still, the inquiry also slammed the province's former chief coroner James Young and his deputy Jim Cairns for failing to respond properly to a decade of complaints about the doctor.

All three apologized or shed tears over their roles in the forensics fiasco.

"I don't expect that you would forgive me," Smith said at one point to Mullins-Johnson. "I do want to make it very clear to you that I am profoundly sorry for the role that I played."

The Ontario government later announced compensation for families affected by Smith's mistakes. Others, like Mullins-Johnson, won hefty lawsuit settlements.
'Primary culprit' in wrongful convictions
Smith resigned from Sick Kids in 2005 and worked for a while in pathology in Saskatoon. He stopped practising in 2008 and was finally stripped of his medical licence in 2011.

Outside Appeal Court on Monday, Shepherd said she did forgive Smith while defence lawyer James Lockyer said flawed forensic pathology has frequently led to wrongful convictions.

"Not always Dr. Smith, but certainly he has been a primary culprit," Lockyer said.
Also on HuffPost

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Ex-Forensic Pathologist Left Trail Of Wrongful Convictions

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TORONTO - The trail of devastation left by a once acclaimed forensic pathologist wound its way yet again through Ontario's top court Monday with the exoneration of a mother wrongly convicted of manslaughter on the basis of his evidence.

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Dinesh Kumar had tears streaming down his face when 19 years of torture was over after the Court of Appeal in Ontario acquitted his case and he was officially “free from the baby killer label”. The Court still didn’t use the words”wrongfully convicted” or “miscarriage of the justice system” in Kumar’s case but he himself was relieved with the court’s decision to exonerate him.

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Man Acquitted In Newborn Son's 1992 Death - CityNews Toronto

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Tears streamed down Dinesh Kumar's face as he walked out of court finally free of the baby killer label that has haunted him for 19 years.

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Dinesh Kumar’s own words from his affidavit to the Ontario Court of Appeal. He is telling how they (his wife Veena, son Saurob and himself) came to Canada, where he worked, what happened on that night when his son Gaurov stopped breathing, how devastated they were when Gaurov passed away and what circumstances led for him to accept the plea deal. Dinesh never lost “his sense of shame” after what happened, some members of his religious community still avoid him but he knows that he did nothing to harm Gaurov. This honest explanation showed the Court that he is a human being who is grieving the loss of his son but was not allowed to do it in peace. Instead he ended up being the one to blame for this unfortunate accident.

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"GAUROV'S DEATH MADE ME AND MY WIFE VERY SAD. WE WERE COMPLETELY DEVASTATED AND DEJECTED. WE ALWAYS REMEMBER HIM. WE TALK ABOUT HIM. WE HAVE TOLD HIS BROTHER ABOUT HIM NOW THAT HE IS OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND. I CARRY A PHOTOGRAPH OF HIM EVERYWHERE I GO. WE CRY FOR HIM. I THINK OF HIM EVERY DAY. WE MAKE A DONATION TO THE TEMPLE IN HIS NAME EVERY YEAR. HE WOULD BE 15 NOW, IN GRADE 11, AND A BROTHER TO SAUROB. AFTER WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, VEENA AND I DECIDED WE COULD NOT DARE TO HAVE ANOTHER BABY IN CASE IT WAS TAKEN AWAY FROM US. SO SAUROB IS AN ONLY CHILD."

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"MY WIFE AND I WERE FURTHER UPSET BY THE POLICE INVESTIGATION. IT MADE IT HARD TO MOURN GAUROV WHEN THE POLICE SEEMED TO THINK WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE CAUSE OF HIS DEATH. I COOPERATED WITH THE POLICE BECAUSE I WANTED ANSWERS TO WHY GAUROV HAD DIED. I COMPLETELY DENIED ANY WRONGDOING AND TOLD THEM EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT. IT WAS A GREAT SHOCK WHEN I WAS ARRESTED ON JUNE 26, 1992. I WAS CONFUSED, FRIGHTENED, HUMILIATED AND ASHAMED BEFORE MY FAMILY AND MY COMMUNITY."

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"MY LAWYER POINTED OUT A LOT OF THINGS TO ME. I WAS FACING LIFE IMPRISONMENT ON THE MURDER CHARGE. I WAS FACING MANY YEARS IN PRISON EVEN IF I WAS ONLY CONVICTED OF MANSLAUGHTER. SO THE CROWN'S OFFER WAS, MY LAWYER TOLD ME, AN EXCELLENT OFFER. MR. GORRELL URGED ME TO ACCEPT IT. I COULD NOT ALLOW MY WIFE TO HAVE TO BRING UP SAUROB WITHOUT ME. THEY NEEDED ME AS A FATHER AND AS FINANCIAL SUPPORT. I WAS ALSO TOLD BY CHILDREN'S AID THAT I COULD HAVE SAUROB BACK IF THAT WAS ALL THAT HAPPENED. I COULD NOT CONCEIVE OF LOSING HIM TOO. I WANTED TO GET EVERYTHING OVER WITH. MR. GORRELL TOLD ME THAT HE DID NOT THINK THERE COULD BE ANY DISPUTE THAT GAUROV HAD BEEN SHAKEN TO DEATH. HE TOLD ME THAT DR. SMITH WAS LIKE "A GOD" IN COURT. MR. GORRELL TOLD ME THAT I WOULD BE DEPORTED IF CONVICTED OF MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER BUT THAT THE POLICE WOULD NOT REPORT MY CASE TO IMMIGRATION IF I ACCEPTED THE PLEA. MY FAMILY, INCLUDING MY WIFE, WANTED ME TO ACCEPT THE CROWN'S OFFER. MY WIFE WAS STILL RECOVERING FROM HER SURGERY AND COULD NOT COPE ALONE WITH ONE INFANT AND NO INCOME. WE ALL WANTED TO PUT MY CHARGE BEHIND US. WE WERE ALL SCARED OF THE MURDER CHARGE. MY LAWYER TOLD ME THAT WE DID NOT HAVE ANY WAY TO CHALLENGE THE TESTIMONY OF DR. SMITH. SO I AGREED, AFTER MUCH DISCUSSION WITH MY FAMILY, TO PLEAD GUILTY AS I DID. IT WAS THE HARDEST DECISION I EVER HAD TO MAKE. I DO NOT WANT MY GUILTY PLEA TO EVER BE INTERPRETED TO MEAN THAT I DID ANYTHING TO HARM GAUROV. I DID NOT. MY WIFE KNOWS THIS TOO."

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"MY CONVICTION WAS A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE. I DID NOTHING WRONG TO GAUROV. MY WIFE AND SAUROB KNOW THIS BUT SOME MEMBERS OF MY RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY STILL AVOID ME. I GO TO MY TEMPLE AND AM SOMETIMES MADE TO FEEL ASHAMED BECAUSE PEOPLE POINT AT ME AND TALK ABOUT ME BEHIND MY BACK AS THE PERSON WHO KILLED HIS OWN BABY. I SAY TO MYSELF I DID NOTHING WRONG BUT THIS ONLY HELPS A LITTLE. I WANT MY NAME TO BE CLEARED. IF MY NAME IS CLEARED, I WILL POST AN ANNOUNCEMENT ON THE NOTICE BOARD OF MY TEMPLE.""

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DINESH KUMAR; FROM HIS AFFIDAVIT TO THE ONTARIO COURT OF APPEAL;
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"I, DINESH KUMAR, of the City of Scarborough, in the Province of Ontario, make oath and say as follows," the affidavit begins;

"I am the Applicant herein. I was born on April 17, 1966 in the State of Punjab, in India. My father, now deceased, worked in public transportation. I am now 42 years of age," it continues;

"I graduated from High School in 1984. I then worked as a goldsmith with my brother in the Punjab.

"In 1989, my wife Veena and I became engaged in the Punjab. I was still working as a goldsmith.

My wife came to Canada in early 1989. She was sponsored here by her brother. Months later she returned to India and we married. She came back to Canada and sponsored me to immigrate here in October, 1990. Saurob, our first son, was born two weeks before I came to Canada.

Shortly after my arrival in Canada, in January or February, 1991, I found employment as a general labourer for Sandy Line Sticker Design in Markham. I worked there for four years. It was in this period that Gaurov was born and died.

Gaurov, our second son, was born on February 11, 1992. The evening of the day Gaurov was born, my wife had a seizure in the Centenary Hospital. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour and remained in hospital for one month. They operated and her tumour was removed. It proved to be benign.

In that month, family care was complicated. I had to keep working to keep my job, and I now had two infants to look after. Gaurov spent some of the period in hospital with my wife. My wife's brother, Yograj Verma, and his wife helped me look after Saurob (and Gaurov). At one point, my wife was allowed to come home for two or three days. Then, on March 3, 1992, my wife was released from hospital. She stayed with her brother and his family for a few days and then came home to me. We were then living at 40 Tuxedo Court, Apartment 1009, in Scarborough.

On Thursday, March 17, 1992, I went to work at Sandy Line. I came home from work in the evening. My wife and our two sons were at home. I fed Gaurov at about 9:00 p.m., burped him and we played. At about 10:00 p.m., I put Gaurov in his crib. We were living in a one bedroom apartment so we all slept in the same room.

At around midnight, Gaurov woke up crying. I fed him milk from a bottle, burped him and placed him back in his crib where he fell asleep. At 12:30 a.m., Gaurov woke up with a scream. I picked him up and realized he was not breathing and was turning blue. I told my wife something was wrong. I took him into the livingroom and gave him first aid, both artificial respiration and mouth to mouth. I had received some training in High School and remembered it. Gaurov was still not breathing. I called Veena's brother to ask what to do (I did not know the 911 call system). He told me to call 911 which I did. Both I and my wife spoke to the emergency operator. I had now placed Gaurov on the sofa, and Veena and I were trying to tend to him.

Neither Veena nor I spoke English very well in 1992. Our native language is Punjabi. Nevertheless, we managed to explain to the 911 operator that Gaurov was in trouble. I told the operator that Gaurov was

"like dead body, I don't know what happened to him."
Veena and I were both panicking.

Emergency personnel came and Gaurov was taken to Centenary Hospital. I followed him there. He was then transferred to the Hospital for Sick Children. A day later, we were told that he was on life support and that he would be monitored to see if he had any brain activity. I could not agree to the life support being removed. He was in bed, breathing and alive. For me as his father, I could not believe he was really dead. Veena's brother was the one who authorized removal of the life support.

Gaurov's death made me and my wife very sad. We were completely devastated and dejected. We always remember him. We talk about him. We have told his brother about him now that he is old enough to understand. I carry a photograph of him everywhere I go. We cry for him. I think of him every day. We make a donation to the Temple in his name every year. He would be 15 now, in Grade 11, and a brother to Saurob. After what happened to me, Veena and I decided we could not dare to have another baby in case it was taken away from us. So Saurob is an only child.

Saurob had suffered a similar experience to Gaurov, fainting suddenly and turning blue when he was an infant. I revived him through mouth to mouth resuscitation. I told the authorities about this while Gaurov was on life support. On March 20, 1992, as Gaurov's life support was removed, Saurob, who was at the hospital, was taken away by Children's Aid. Almost three weeks later, he was allowed into the care of Veena's brother. At first, neither Veena nor I could be alone with him. We had now lost both our boys.

My wife and I were further upset by the police investigation. It made it hard to mourn Gaurov when the police seemed to think we might have been the cause of his death. I cooperated with the police because I wanted answers to why Gaurov had died. I completely denied any wrongdoing and told them exactly what happened that night. It was a great shock when I was arrested on June 26, 1992. I was confused, frightened, humiliated and ashamed before my family and my community.

I spent two weeks in prison. I was then released on bail. One of my bail conditions was:
..not to have contact with his son born on October 9, 1990 except in the presence of a supervisor of the Children's Aid Society.

I was in a new country with its own culture, and did not speak English very well. I was represented by David Gorrell and Dharman Kissoon. They presented me with the Crown's position on my case; I was told the Crown's final position was that if I pleaded guilty to Criminal Negligence Causing Death I would be sentenced to 90 days to be served on weekends, and a term of probation. I thought very hard about whether I should plead guilty. First, I knew that I had done nothing to cause Gaurov's death. I loved him, cared for him and would never have done anything to hurt him. I did not, as was claimed, shake him at all. I was a gentle, careful, loving father to him at all times without exception.

My lawyer pointed out a lot of things to me. I was facing life imprisonment on the murder charge. I was facing many years in prison even if I was only convicted of manslaughter. So the Crown's offer was, my lawyer told me, an excellent offer. Mr. Gorrell urged me to accept it. I could not allow my wife to have to bring up Saurob without me. They needed me as a father and as financial support. I was also told by Children's Aid that I could have Saurob back if that was all that happened. I could not conceive of losing him too. I wanted to get everything over with. Mr. Gorrell told me that he did not think there could be any dispute that Gaurov had been shaken to death. He told me that Dr. Smith was like "a God" in Court. Mr. Gorrell told me that I would be deported if convicted of murder or manslaughter but that the police would not report my case to immigration if I accepted the plea.

My family, including my wife, wanted me to accept the Crown's offer. My wife was still recovering from her surgery and could not cope alone with one infant and no income. We all wanted to put my charge behind us. We were all scared of the murder charge. My lawyer told me that we did not have any way to challenge the testimony of Dr. Smith. So I agreed, after much discussion with my family, to plead guilty as I did. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make. I do not want my guilty plea to ever be interpreted to mean that I did anything to harm Gaurov. I did not. My wife knows this too.

My plea succeeded in one very important way. There was no condition in my probation order preventing me from being with Saurob. I was simply required to

"- take such counselling that are (sic) made available to you by either the Children's Aid Society or some community organization,

- follow up on any plan relating to parenting skills and attend to such plan as recommended by your probation officer."

As a way to relieve some of the pressure, my wife took Saurob to India for an extended stay. I visited them there for a month in April, 1993, and we all returned to Canada in May, 1993, where we lived together again as a family and have ever since.

Life returned to normal but I never lost my sense of shame that I had had to admit to causing Gaurov's death. For 13 years I assumed it was over. My wife and Saurob became Canadian citizens. I never applied for citizenship for fear that my conviction would come up and cause an immigration investigation of me.

Then, in 2005 or 2006, I received a telephone call from the Chief Coroner's Office telling me that Gaurov's case might be re-examined. The man told me that there might be something about it in the newspapers. I did not know what to think of this. My wife and I were scared that they might be thinking of charging me again. I went to see my family doctor who then explained that they were looking at all of Dr. Smith's cases in case he had got things wrong. I was very relieved. I heard nothing more until 2007.

On the evening of May 28, 2007, Mr. Lockyer came to my home in Scarborough. Only Saurob was at home. I was at work. Saurob gave Mr. Lockyer my telephone number and he called me. He told me that he was calling for an organization which I now know to be AIDWYC. He explained that there was new information about how and why Gaurov had died. He asked me if, after so many years, I wanted to reopen my case. I responded by simply telling him that I thought of Gaurov every single day.
23. I met Mr. Lockyer on May 31, 2007. Since then I have come to understand that medical science now has natural cause explanations for Gaurov's death. I followed the proceedings at the Goudge Inquiry. I met Mr. Justice Goudge for an hour on June 20, 2007. I went to watch the Inquiry proceedings on several days and watched Dr. Charles Smith's testimony for all five days that he gave evidence. I feel that my life will be starting all over again if I can re-open my case and be found innocent of killing my son.

My conviction was a miscarriage of justice. I did nothing wrong to Gaurov. My wife and Saurob know this but some members of my religious community still avoid me. I go to my Temple and am sometimes made to feel ashamed because people point at me and talk about me behind my back as the person who killed his own baby. I say to myself I did nothing wrong but this only helps a little. I want my name to be cleared. If my name is cleared, I will post an announcement on the notice board of my Temple."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

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Part Five:Gaurov's Father: Dinesh Kumar's Affidavit; A Heart-Rending Document; A Message To His Temple;

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"GAUROV'S DEATH MADE ME AND MY WIFE VERY SAD. WE WERE COMPLETELY DEVASTATED AND DEJECTED. WE ALWAYS REMEMBER HIM. WE TALK ABOUT HIM. WE HAVE TOLD HIS BROTHER ABOUT HIM NOW THAT HE IS OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND. I CARRY A PHOTOGRAPH OF HIM EVERYWHERE I GO. WE CRY FOR HIM.

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Dinesh Kumar carries his passed son’s picture with him everywhere he goes. Now he is finally free from the guilt of harming him. https://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137507575/the-child-cases-lessons-from-canada

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Dinesh and Veena Kumar holding their son Gaurov’s picture.
http://people.stu.ca/~mccormic/3503WRONGFUL%21/workbook/KumarPhotos.html