Devyani Khobragade, deputy consul general at the Indian Consulate leaving federal court.[/caption]NEW DELHI: Even as India condemned the ill-treatment to diplomat Devyani Khobragade at the US, her father alleged she was being made a scapegoat. Concerned over her safety and liberty, he requested UPA chief Sonia Gandhi to get her back.
“It is the government who has sent my daughter. It is a political issue between these two countries and my daughter is being made a scapegoat,” Devyani’s father Uttam Khobragade said here Tuesday.
India protested Devyani being strip-searched, confined in a cell with drug addicts and subjected to DNA swabbing, and has asked US to return all ID cards issued to their consular officers here.
A US Congressional delegation who were snubbed by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and NSA Shivshankar Menon Monday, was told Tuesday that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had refused their appointments with the trio following the dispute.
Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, was accused last week by Manhattan’s Indian-American US attorney Preet Bharara of visa fraud and exploiting her babysitter and housekeeper.
Earlier, the US justified its actions calling them “standard procedures”. State department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters their diplomatic security folks followed standard procedures.
She said the Indian deputy consul general enjoyed immunity from the jurisdiction of US courts only with respect to acts performed in the exercise of consular functions under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
“There’s different kinds of immunity. This isn’t just in the US; it’s all around the world. So in this case, she fell under that specific kind of immunity, and would be liable to arrest pending trial pursuant a felony arrest warrant,” she added.
