India retaliates against US arrest of diplomat

Policemen watch as a bulldozer removes a barricade in front of the US embassy in New Delhi yesterday.

Agencies/New Delhi

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 US embassy in New Delhi.

India has also withdrawn all airport access passes for consular officials. The pass helped US diplomats and their families to enter the airport without security checks. They would now be required to request for airport passes each time they take a flight, officials said. Indian consulate staff in the US are not given airport passes.

According to sources, India could also consider taking action against gay US diplomats who bring along their same-sex partners as homosexuality has now been criminalised by the Supreme Court.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath, asserting that India was not a “Banana republic”, said the US should tender an “unconditional apology” and that “more steps need to be taken to awaken the US (because) it’s (now) a changed world.”

Tow-trucks and mechanical diggers were seen taking away the heavy barriers which control traffic from the streets around the embassy.

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.

External Affairs 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 told reporters 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 regularly 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.

“I am concerned with the safety and dignity of my daughter. I want my daughter back safe in India,” Uttam Khobragade told TV stations.

With general elections just months away in India, both the ruling Congress Party and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party are keen not to be seen as being too lenient with the US over the issue.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon called the diplomat’s treatment “barbaric” while a string of senior politicians from both major parties snubbed a visiting US Congressional delegation over the issue.

Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP candidate for prime minister, Narendra Modi, said he had “refused” to meet the US delegation over the arrest.

“Refused to meet the visiting USA delegation in solidarity with our nation, protesting ill-treatment meted to our lady diplomat in USA,” Modi said in a tweet.

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar The speaker of the lower house of parliament also called off a meeting with the US visitors, her office said, while Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s office said he was too busy in parliament.

The Indian embassy in Washington said on Friday that the detention was based on “allegations raised by the officer’s former India-based domestic assistant.”

The domestic worker had “absconded” from her employer in June and was already the subject of an injunction issued by the Delhi High Court, the embassy added in a statement on its website.

In a sign the row was deepening, television networks reported that the foreign ministry was also considering checking the salaries paid by US embassy staff to domestic helpers.