Model pleads guilty in fake Bollywood casting call kidnapping
Posted April 1, 2011 2:11 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The woman accused of kidnapping a baby at a fake Bollywood movie casting call in Toronto has pleaded guilty.
Michelle Gopaul, 24, was charged with abduction of a person under the age of 14 following the Dec. 30, 2010 incident.
She has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in addition to the time she has already spent in custody.
“There is no more heinous crime,” Justice William Wolski said in his sentencing.
“The emotional harm to the parents was enormous…they endured the agony of someone taking their baby,” Wolski continued.
In her plea, Gopaul told the could she pretended to be pregnant to keep her ex-boyfriend in her life. She appeared pregnant in photos posted online, even though she wasn’t, and posted an ultrasound that was not her own. The ex-boyfriend believed Gopaul and had purchased a crib and a stroller.
Needing a baby, Gopaul admitted she staged a casting call for a Bollywood movie using Craigslist. The parents of one-month-old Roma Patel brought her to the audition in a building in the Islington and Lake Shore Blvd. area. Gopaul saw three other babies before the Patels let her hold their daughter. After a couple of minutes in the building, she allegedly whisked their baby into another room and disappeared.
“As soon as I had the baby in my arms I snapped to reality,” Gopaul told the court. She met with her ex-boyfriend and his sisters, handed them the baby, and fled. The ex-boyfriend became suspicious and took the baby to police. The child was unharmed during the ordeal.
Gopaul was arrested shortly after.
Justice Wolski ordred Gopaul to seek mental health treatment while in custody.
The Patel family did not appear in court.
Watch Gopaul’s lawyer Gary Batasar and her mother Bridget Gopaul speak outside the College Park courthouse in the video below.
