NEW DELHI: India on Tuesday demanded an “unconditional apology” from the US over the hand-cuffing and strip searching of its diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York, and also withdraw some privileges of American diplomats in an apparent retaliatory measure.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath said the US should tender “unconditional apology” to India over the public humiliation of its diplomat.
The arrest and strip search of an Indian diplomat in New York City escalated into a major diplomatic furore on Tuesday as India’s national security adviser called the woman’s treatment “despicable and barbaric.”
Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, is accused of submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for her Manhattan housekeeper.
Indian officials said she was arrested and handcuffed on Thursday as she dropped off her daughter at school, and kept in a cell with drug addicts before posting $250,000 bail.
A senior Indian official told The Associated Press that she was also strip-searched, which has been portrayed in India as the most offensive and troubling part of the arrest.
India was preparing to retaliate against American diplomats in India by threatening to downgrade privileges and demanding information about how much they pay their Indian household staff, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
Indian workers also removed the traffic barricades near the US Embassy in New Delhi that had been erected as a safety measure.
PTI said the removal was a demand by the Indian government in retaliation for Khobragade’s treatment.
“We got orders to remove the concrete barriers,” said Amardeep Sehgal, station house officer of the Chanakyapuri police station, the one nearest the embassy.
“They were obstructing traffic on the road.”
He refused to say who had given the orders.
Calls to the US Embassy were not immediately returned Tuesday. National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon slammed Khobragade’s treatment in New York.
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Prosecutors in New York say Khobragade, 39, claimed she paid her Indian maid $4,500 per month but actually paid her less than the US minimum wage.
Salaries for many workers in India, particularly for domestic help, are far lower than what they would earn in the United States.
Khobragade has pleaded not guilty and plans to challenge the arrest on grounds of diplomatic immunity, her lawyer said last week.
If convicted, Khobragade faces a maximum sentence of 10 years for visa fraud and five years for making a false declaration.
Her case quickly became a major story in India, with politicians urging diplomatic retaliation and TV news channels showing the woman in a series of smiling family photos.
That reaction may look outsized in the United States, but the case touches on a string of issues that strike deeply in India, where the fear of public humiliation resonates strongly and heavy-handed treatment by the police is normally reserved for the poor.
For an educated, middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable, except in the most brutal crimes.
Far less serious protocol complaints have become big issues in the past.
Standard security checks in the US regularly are front-page news here when they involve visiting Indian dignitaries, who are largely exempt from friskings while at home.
India’s former speaker of Parliament, Somnath Chatterjee, once refused to attend an international meeting in Australia when he wasn’t given a guarantee that he would not have to pass through security.
Chatterjee said even the possibility of a security screening was “an affront to India.”
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