A rape charge against a Rappahannock Community College professor and local businessman was dismissed last week after a Gloucester Circuit Court jury found him not guilty of the crime.

The defendant, Mahmood Kalantar, was acquitted after a jury of six men and six women deliberated less than 30 minutes. The proceedings began Dec. 6 and stretched to almost noon the next day before the panel was asked to decide the case.

Kalantar’s accuser, an RCC student who said she was introduced to him in the fall of 2010, testified that she met him one evening in early April at a vacant house he had offered to rent to her. She said while they were inside the house, Kalantar knocked her to the floor and raped her.

After the alleged sexual assault, the woman said Kalantar followed her as she ran to her vehicle, then leaned inside the window and asked her not to say anything to anybody before he gave her $40 and said "that ought to cover it." She testified that she then went home ...