NEW DELHI, Dec 13: India protested to the United States on Friday against the handcuffing of its woman diplomat in New York who has been charged with visa fraud involving an apparently underpaid but overworked housemaid.
Deploring the arrest of Deputy Consul General in New York, Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh summoned US Ambassador Nancy Powell to convey India’s “shock” over “absolutely unacceptable” treatment meted out to the senior Indian diplomat.
India’s Deputy Consul General Devyani Khobragade in New York was arrested and handcuffed in public on visa fraud charges, which carries a jail term of 10 years.
Ms Singh told Ms Powell that the senior diplomat was entitled to the courtesies under various multilateral conventions dealing with diplomatic fraternity posted in foreign countries, according to local media reports.
Reports say Ms Khobragade, 39, was taken into custody on a street in New York as she was dropping her daughter to school at 9am on Thursday and handcuffed in public on visa fraud charges before being released on a $250,000 bond after pleading not guilty in court.
“We are shocked and appalled at the manner in which she has been humiliated by the US authorities. We have taken it up forcefully with the US government through our embassy in Washington. We are also reiterating, in no uncertain terms, to US embassy here that this kind of treatment to one of our diplomats is absolutely unacceptable,” foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said.
“Nothing entails the humiliation of a young woman with two small children publicly, a person who has been a diplomat sent there to represent her country. We will take issue of legal nature separately but there is no justification or acceptability of what has happened to the young diplomat who had gone to drop her children in a school,” he said.
This is reported to be the third case involving a senior official of the New York Indian Consulate in three years. In June 2011, a former housekeeper had sued India’s then Consul General in New York Prabhu Dayal accusing him of intimidating her into a year of forced labour.
In February 2012, Indian maid Shanti Gurung won a case against Neena Malhotra, who served as a Press and Culture Counsellor at the New York Consulate from 2006 to 2009.
