“Shoddy and inept police work” and “unacceptable negligence” by Peel Police officers investigating a violent kidnapping case — including losing key pieces of evidence — has triggered a mistrial and an order that hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds be paid to the accused to cover legal costs, a judge has ruled.

In a strikingly candid indictment of the “inadequacies of the police investigation” and “negligence” by the Crown, Justice Antonio Skarica ruled that police misplaced a wallet and driver's licence that were central to the Crown’s case against the accused — Asogian Gunalingam, Jaswinder Singh and Jora Jassal.

Together, the three faced charges of kidnapping, extortion and assault of a Brampton woman over three days in November 2011.

As a result of a botched police investigation, the men have been released from prison, pending a Crown decision to re-try the case and the judge ruled that all legal defence costs be awarded to them.

It is expected legal costs for the now aborted trial — which ran from November until February — will top $300,000, according to defence attorneys. A hearing to determine the final tally is expected Wednesday.

“This is an offence of stark terror inflicted on a totally innocent person,” Skarica wrote in his decision. “(The victim) and the public at large deserved better than the sloppy investigation that was to follow.”

If convicted, the three men were facing the potential of life in prison.

Both the Ministry of the Attorney General and Peel Regional Police declined comment on the decision because the matter remains before the courts.

The facts of the case read like a horror film script.

After sending her daughter to school one morning, the 38-year-old victim, whose name is protected under a publication ban, was in her house alone getting ready for work when the doorbell rang.

When she opened her door, a man “put his arm around her neck and mouth,” the ruling reads, and a second man pushed her into the basement.

They demanded money, jewelry and information about her cousin who was a dentist. They took $800 from her purse and demanded a further $100,000.

When she said she did not have it, one of the men said they were going to take her away and “she would never see her house again.”

Her arms, mouth and eyes were tied with cloth before she was moved to a vehicle and told “if she tried to move, she is dead.”

At another house, she was taken to the basement where her bank cards were taken and she was told to write down the PIN numbers, the ruling says.

She was hit in the face and tied to a bed.

“The man in the mask told her they wanted $300,000 or she would never see her daughter and never go back to her house. She was told she was done; she was gone. He started to hit her. She was terrified. She was crying and begged him to let her go.”

The next day, the same man tied her up “very tightly” and “started to touch her legs.” She testified that it “was the most terrifying moment of my life” and said she begged him not to touch her but to “take her life instead.”

He was interrupted by another of the men.

The men later told her they had her daughter as well and that the victim’s boyfriend was upstairs being beaten.

On the morning of the third day, police arrived and rescued her.

A major piece of evidence was a pair of pants seized by police at the time of Gunalingam’s arrest which allegedly contained the victim’s driver’s licence and a blank personal cheque belonging to the victim.

“I believe that it can be fairly said that the pants and their contents are the strongest piece of evidence implicating Mr. Gunalingam to these serious offences,” Skarica wrote.

But, the wallet disappeared. The explanation offered raised “serious concerns” that speak to “negligence of the police bordering on gross negligence,” the judge concludes.

“(Peel officer) PC Getty testified that the wallet has gone missing but he never told anyone it was missing. Further the accused's driver's licence, pulled from the missing wallet, has gone missing as well …There was no explanation from anyone as to how this driver's licence disappeared.”

Skarica says it is “hard to believe,” given the wallet’s value to the Crown’s case, that no one would notice its disappearance or seek to relocate it instantly.

“No one ever noticed it was missing or looked for it. PC Getty… never noticed that it was missing until he was cross-examined about it almost a year later. I heard no evidence that any efforts were made in an attempt to locate it. This is unacceptable negligence on behalf of the Peel Police Service.”

Gunalingam, 32, who has spent nearly two and a half years in custody, was released on bail Monday as part of the decision, says his lawyer, Robert Lepore.

“In my 22 years doing this I’ve never seen a description of the conduct of the police and the Crown in the manner in which his Honour put it. I think it’s an out-and-out condemnation of the whole investigation and the whole prosecution of the case.”

He says the process has been “absolutely devastating” on his client who has “lost everything.”

Gunalingam, self-employed in home renovation work prior to his incarceration, previously faced 2010 charges of kidnapping, extortion, forcible confinement and uttering threats stemming from an unrelated attempted jewelry store robbery.

Most of those charges were subsequently withdrawn by the Crown, says Lepore, but Gunalingam did plead to uttering threats and was given a suspended sentence with probation.

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Skarica’s ruling also chastises the force’s vigilance in maintaining crucial evidence, detailing how material seized during the investigation was removed from police storage lockers without being logged.

“Basically, it would appear that important evidence on a serious case is placed into an unsealed bag and that another officer can access the locker without any formal record of that happening,” he wrote. “It is my opinion that there is more rigour in taking out and returning a book from a public library.”

In one striking passage, the judge says that while allegations against police of “planting” evidence are normally “dismissed out of hand,” this case is different.

“Given the missing wallet and ID and given the contradictory evidence of (officers) along with ongoing 'new' versions of evidence, I find that there is an air of reality to such a defence, that the jury would have to determine ultimately.”

Blame for the bungled prosecution is also shared by the Crown’s office in the ruling.

Skarica fires particularly sharp criticism at the decision to shuffle a series of four Crown attorneys in and out of the case which, he concludes, triggered an 18-month delay in disclosing key cell phone records related to the accused.

“Only after a month of trial proceedings was this obvious material evidence disclosed …This is very serious non-disclosure.”

He details one dramatic moment in court illustrating the lack of communication between police and the Crown: In the middle of an officer’s testimony in front of a jury, the Crown discovered a piece of potentially important evidence — a credit card — they had never seen before.

“The Crown expressed surprise as did the defence,” Skarica wrote, calling the discovery of the card in the middle of the proceedings “late as you can get disclosure.”

The breaches were the result of too many Crown attorneys juggling the case as colleagues were pulled off to handle other matters.

“The policy of the Attorney General (AG), as I understand it, is that serious matters are to be assigned at any early stage to a Crown and they are, if at all possible, to remain on that file. The serious non-disclosure that occurred here illustrates the wisdom of that AG policy and the ruinous consequences of violating it.”

He offers a blunt assessment: “I reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Crown was negligent in not disclosing the evidence of the cell phone records which were in the possession and knowledge of the prosecution in the spring of 2012, which is well before the preliminary hearing, pre-trial motions and the first month of the trial of this serious matter.”

Singh spent nearly two years in prison awaiting the outcome of the hearing. He was released this past summer on bail.

“All along the way there were problems with communications between the police and the Crown and evidence that should be been provided was not done so on a timely basis,” says his lawyer Jesse Razaqpur.

Lawyers for the accused sought a stay of proceedings that would have ended the possibility of a retrial. The judge stopped short of awarding it.

So while the decision provides a reprieve for the accused, the cloud of a possible retrial remains, said Razaqpur.

“I don’t think anybody won,” he says. “To charge an individual and then put them through two-and-a-half months of trial and then say, by the way, we have to do this again, would leave anybody in an incredibly difficult position.”

Deepak Paradkar, the lawyer representing Jassal, a 30-year-old truck driver, says the frank language in the ruling is rare.

“When you’re mid-trial and getting significant pieces of disclosure that hasn’t been given to you, there’s a lack of due process. (The ruling) basically called out the police for what they were … negligent.”

Paradkar called the amount of money to be awarded to the accused for costs in a criminal case “unprecedented.”

The unusual awarding of costs in a criminal case was based, the judge ruled, on “numerous breaches” by police and the Crown that resulted in the three accused, “through no fault of their own, incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs that could have been avoided had the prosecution provided timely disclosure as they were obligated to do.”

Those legal costs would amount to “extreme hardship on the accused,” he ruled.