It was a video that went viral — a law student criminally charged for using the K-word and members of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro police in turn accused of manhandling him when he was seen dragged kicking and screaming into the back of a van for allegedly driving recklessly.

And now, after his acquittal, Dewald Peens, 24, said he had been left picking up the pieces of the trauma of being publicly branded as a racist...