Fresno City Council candidate Naindeep Singh on Monday, November 2 — the day before voters decide his race — demanded that California Attorney General Rob Bonta investigate the circumstances of his arrest last month on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs, an arrest the Fresno Police Department has already quashed after laboratory tests showed no drugs in his system. Singh's attorney, Kevin Little, told a Monday news conference that he has initiated the process of formally requesting a state investigation.
Source: Fresnoland, Nov 2, 2026
“The reasons why these questions need to be answered is because the circumstances that we currently have before us are strongly suggestive of election interference,” Little said at the news conference. Singh and Little said they are not currently planning to sue the City of Fresno; instead they will wait for what they called an independent investigation — defined by them as one not conducted by a local law firm or a legal agency paid for by Fresno City Hall.
A traffic stop in the Tower District, and an arrest that collapsed in days
Singh, 48, a school board trustee running for the District 1 seat on the Fresno City Council, was arrested on Saturday, October 24, and briefly detained on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs. According to Singh's own account, he was on his third consecutive day of observing the city's Tower District safety plan when a motorcycle officer stopped him as he drove southbound on Wishon Avenue and was about to turn left onto Olive Avenue, over an allegedly expired vehicle registration. Singh says he had paid the registration months earlier, on June 19, 2026, and that he cooperated fully — with field sobriety testing, a breathalyzer, which he says was negative, and a toxicology examination at Community Regional Medical Center.
Police Chief Mindy Casto has disputed parts of that account: she said the officer confirmed the registration was expired and that Singh failed several field sobriety indicators, while also praising the conduct of both the officer and Singh during the stop. What is not in dispute is how the case ended. Preliminary toxicology results confirmed Singh's own independent test results showing no drugs in his system, and on Tuesday, October 27, Casto issued a rare public apology, said the arrest was quashed and would not move forward. Mayor Jerry Dyer also apologized. Despite the apology, Casto has stood by her officers, saying there were no political or racial motives behind the arrest, and that the officer believed there was probable cause at the time.
The leak, the city attorney, and the body-camera footage the city will not release
Singh's demand is about more than the stop itself. News of the arrest reached a local community blog quickly, and Singh's side wants to know how. Fresnoland has reported that City Attorney Andrew Janz was the city official who first confirmed the arrest over the weekend to an independent blogger — an office that does not handle DUI cases but does hold oversight roles in local elections, including Singh's race. Hours after the chief walked back the arrest, the Fresno-based Bains Law Offices, founded by attorney Iqbal Singh Bains, sent City Hall a detailed letter demanding an independent investigation into Janz and his handling of the arrest. Councilmember Miguel Arias, a Singh supporter, has also said he plans to call for an internal review of how the news leaked and whether policies were violated.
The City Attorney's Office has defended itself in one brief statement. “The City Attorney and his office are tasked with responding to matters of public record, a requirement under state and federal law. An arrest is a matter of public record,” spokesperson Marcelino Valdez said, adding that the office confirmed the arrest when asked by a journalist, at the same time as the police department. But Janz's office has not commented on the central contradiction in the city's position: police, including the chief, have said the body-camera footage of the stop could be released, while the City Attorney's Office has refused to release it, citing an “ongoing investigation” — into a case the police chief says is closed. Fresnoland's follow-up questions about the footage went unanswered.
Why this case reaches far beyond one candidate
Singh is one of the Fresno Police Department's loudest public critics, and his supporters say the case fits a documented pattern. Sandra Celedon, president and CEO of Fresno Building Healthy Communities, called for an independent review of whether race played a role in the stop and for the release of the body-camera footage. Her organisation's report with Catalyst California, built on 2022 Fresno police data collected under California's Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA), found traffic stops falling disproportionately on Black and brown drivers, often beginning with low-level paperwork or equipment violations. “Mr. Singh's stop began with an expired registration sticker. That is exactly the kind of low-level violation our report flagged as a doorway to unnecessary escalation,” Celedon said. “We appreciate that Chief Casto and Mayor Dyer apologized. But an apology is not accountability.”
There is a longer history, too. Fresnoland has reported that Singh told the outlet last year he had been followed by unidentified people in the fall of 2023, after a meeting between senior police officials and members of Fresno's Hindu community at which, police have acknowledged, community members asked officers to monitor Singh and another man — without evidence — for alleged ties to organised crime. Current and former officers denied following him. In a disclosure that cuts the other way politically, Fresnoland has also noted that Little, Singh's attorney in this matter, has donated to and endorsed Singh's opponent, Rob Fuentes. Little said last week that no claims for damages had been filed, and that his aim was “to get to the bottom of what at this point appears to be potential police and government misconduct.”
Fresno and the Central Valley are home to one of the largest Punjabi communities in the United States, and Singh — a sitting school board trustee — is one of the community's most visible public figures. A quashed arrest of a Punjabi candidate ten days before an election, a police chief's public apology, and a fight over body-camera footage have made this a defining local story of the 2026 midterms in the Valley.
What happens next
Even if Bonta's office takes up the request, a state investigation cannot realistically begin before polls close on Tuesday, November 3, when District 1 voters choose between Singh and Fuentes. The immediate fights are narrower: whether the body-camera footage is released, whether the city orders the internal review Arias has proposed, and whether the Attorney General's office accepts the case at all. Singh's side has left a lawsuit on the table as a later option. For voters, the facts that are settled are these: the arrest happened, the drug tests were negative, the department apologised and quashed it — and almost everything about why it happened, and how it became public so fast, remains officially unanswered.