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India retaliates over US arrest of diplomat amid mounting anger
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India launched a series of reprisals against US officials yesterday, foreign ministry sources said, as outrage grows over a diplomat’s arrest in New York, which New Delhi has branded “humiliating.”
In an escalating row over the arrest, the Indian government ordered a range of measures including the return of identity cards for US consular officials that speed up travel into and through India, the sources said.
“We have ordered the withdrawal of all ID cards that are issued by the Ministry of External Affairs to the officials at the US consulates across India,” a senior ministry source said on condition of anonymity.
The government will also stop all import clearances for the US embassy including liquor, the sources said, while Indian security forces removed barricades from outside the embassy.
Tow-trucks and mechanical diggers were seen taking away the heavy barriers which control traffic from the streets around the embassy in New Delhi.
The moves come after India’s deputy consul general in the US, Devyani Khobragade, was arrested in New York last week while dropping her children off at school.
Khobragade was arrested for allegedly underpaying her domestic helper, who is also an Indian national, and for lying on the helper’s visa application form.
Anger over the incident has been mounting in the Indian press, with front-page reports yesterday claiming Khobragade had been handcuffed and “strip-searched and confined with drug addicts” after her arrest.
Completely unacceptable
Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid said yesterday the government had “put in motion” measures to address the arrest, calling Khobragade’s seizure “completely unacceptable.”
“We have put in motion what we believe would be effective ways of addressing the issue but also (put) in motion such steps that need to be taken to protect her dignity,” Khurshid said in New Delhi without confirming the new reprisals.
India last Friday summoned the US ambassador to protest at the arrest, with a foreign ministry official saying at the time that India was “shocked and appalled” at the US handling of the incident.
The arrest cuts into a series of issues in India where fear of public humiliation, particularly among the middle and upper classes, resonates deeply, and pay and conditions for servants is kept mostly private.
The case is also the latest involving alleged mistreatment of domestic workers by wealthy Indian families. Many are poorly paid in India and rights groups report cases of beating and other abuse.
US State Department deputy spokesman Marie Harf said on Monday that diplomatic security staff “followed standard procedures” during the arrest before Khobragade was handed over to US Marshals.
Harf also said Khobragade does not have full diplomatic immunity. She only has immunity from prosecution with respect to duties performed as a consular official, under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
The diplomat’s father urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene in the case and ensure his daughter’s safe return to India.
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