Chaumtoli Huq, a former top human rights lawyer of New York, has filed a lawsuit against the NY Police Department for alleged police brutality.
According to the case statement, the Bangladesh-origin lawyer was arrested by the NY police in Times Square after leaving a pro-Palestinian rally in July and without any legal basis, the police grabbed Ms Huq, turned her and pushed her against the wall.
What happened, according to Huq's lawsuit, was "unreasonable and wholly unprovoked force" on the part of the police.
Ms Huq told the New York Daily News that she was outside a Ruby Tuesday restaurant waiting for her husband and two kids to leave the bathroom when a police officer asked her to leave.
When she said she was waiting for her family, the police grabbed her placed her under arrest.
“That's not all. An officer said shut your mouth, when I told them that I was in pain. I was also told that in America, wives take the names of their husbands when it was revealed that I had kept my own last name after getting married,” said Ms Haq.
She also said she was held for nine hours on charges that she had refused to move and "flailed her arms and twisted her body" to avoid being handcuffed.
Ms Huq, who was wearing a traditional South Asian tunic at the time of the arrest, believed that she was targeted because she was a Muslim woman.
"My civil rights were violated. I think that I was treated differently because of being a woman," she said.
"I think I was targeted once my husband left. I think that I was being targeted based on my religion and my race."
In addition to the lawsuit, Huq filed a complaint with the NYPD Civilian Complaint Review Board, according to DNAinfo.
A federal lawsuit against the NYPD for targeting Muslims may be next.
The officer in question, Ryan Lathrop, is also the subject of an internal NYPD investigation for allegedly throwing a 25-year-old Naquan Miles to the ground after confiscating his phone, according to NY1. Miles had been recording Lathrop.
The city told the New York Daily News that Huq's lawsuit will be reviewed.