What has India done wrong?
"India official calls envoy’s arrest in N.Y. ‘barbaric’" Associated Press, December 18, 2013
NEW DELHI — The arrest and alleged strip search of an Indian diplomat in New York City escalated into a major diplomatic furor 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 Thursday as she dropped off her daughter at school, and was kept in a cell with drug addicts before posting $250,000 bail.
She was arrested in front of her children? How distasteful and offensive! The AmeriKan thugs couldn't have waited another five minutes?
In a statement, the US Marshals Service confirmed that Khobragade was subjected to the same booking procedures as other prisoners, including being strip-searched and locked up with other female defendants.
A senior Indian official also confirmed reports that she was strip-searched, which has been portrayed in India as the most offensive and troubling part of the arrest.
Just some government jackboot getting their jollies.
Federal authorities said they were looking into the arrest.
“We understand that this is a sensitive issue for many in India,” said Marie Harf, State Department deputy spokeswoman. “Accordingly, we are looking into the intake procedures surrounding this arrest to ensure that all appropriate procedures were followed and every opportunity for courtesy was extended.” Harf said that federal authorities would work on the issue with India “in the spirit of partnership and cooperation that marks our broad bilateral relationship.”
India was ready to retaliate against American diplomats in India by threatening to downgrade privileges, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
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"Strip-searched diplomat transferred" by Cara Anna and Nirmala George | Associated Press, December 19, 2013
UNITED NATIONS — The Indian diplomat who was strip-searched after her arrest in New York City on visa charges has been transferred to India’s mission to the United Nations, a former colleague said Wednesday.
Devyani Khobragade, who was India’s deputy consul general in New York, says she has full diplomatic immunity from prosecution. The State Department disputes that.
It is unclear how the move to the UN mission might affect Khobragade’s immunity. But Secretary of State John Kerry called a top Indian official to express his regret over the incident, which has outraged India and put a chill in the countries’ relations. India has revoked privileges for US diplomats in protest.
India is pissed!
Khobragade was arrested last week outside of her daughter’s Manhattan school on charges that she lied on a visa application about how much she paid her housekeeper, an Indian national. Prosecutors say the maid received less than $3 per hour for her work.
That is what this is about?
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Saudi Princess Gets Slavery Charge Dismissed
Meanwhile the U.K. slavery case has slid down the old ma$$ media memory hole.
Related:
"illegal immigrants, who mow the lawns, trim the hedges, clean the swimming pools, park the cars, serve the hors d'oeuvres, tidy up the mansions, and do many of the other things that make life so enjoyable for the rich"
Yes, the elite cla$$es all do such things. And you wonder why more work visas are scheduled for immigrants as the "problem" remains unre$olved?
Khobragade has pleaded not guilty. Her lawyer, Daniel Arshack, insisted she is and has always been covered by full diplomatic immunity.
State Department officials said Khobragade’s immunity from prosecution was limited to acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.
State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Kerry called India’s national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, who called the diplomat’s treatment despicable and barbaric.
In India, 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.
It's the same in all societies!
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the diplomat’s treatment deplorable. Venkatasamy Perumal, consul for press and information at the Indian consulate in New York, confirmed Khobragade’s transfer but declined to comment further. Requests for comment to the UN mission’s first secretary were not returned....
Khobragade has said US authorities subjected her to a strip search, cavity search, and DNA swabbing following her arrest.
Ooooh!
In an e-mail published in India media on Wednesday, Khobragade said she was treated like a common criminal.
‘‘I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, in a holdup with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity,’’ she wrote.
An Indian official with knowledge of the case confirmed that the e-mail was authentic. The official said India’s priority now is to get the woman returned home....
Khobragade was arrested by the Department of State’s diplomatic security team, then handed over to US marshals. The US Marshals Service confirmed Tuesday that it had strip-searched Khobragade and placed her in a cell with other female defendants.
White House spokesman Jay Carney sought to downplay the incident.
‘‘This isolated episode is not indicative of the close and mutually respectful ties’’ that the United States and India share,’’ he said.
It's called damage control.
If convicted, Khobragade faces a sentence of 10 years for visa fraud and five years for making a false declaration.
India retaliated against US diplomats with measures that include revoking diplomat ID cards that brought certain privileges, demanding to know the salaries paid to Indian staff in US Embassy households, and withdrawing import licenses that allowed the commissary at the US Embassy to import alcohol and food.
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They degraded and humiliated that beautiful woman?
"India demands US drop case against diplomat; Says she was blackmailed" by Ashok Sharma | Associated Press, December 20, 2013
NEW DELHI — India’s foreign minister demanded Thursday that the United States drop the case against a diplomat who was arrested and strip-searched in New York City, saying she was the victim of a blackmail attempt by her housekeeper.
The case has sparked a diplomatic furor between the United States and India, which is incensed over what its officials describe as degrading treatment of Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York.
The US Marshals Service confirmed it strip-searched Khobragade after her arrest, but denied her claim that she underwent a cavity search.
I believe the woman not my government.
Khobragade, 39, is accused of submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for her Manhattan housekeeper, an Indian national. According to prosecutors, Khobragade said she paid the woman $4,500 a month, but actually paid her around $3 per hour.
The case has sparked widespread outrage in India, where the idea of an educated middle-class woman facing a strip-search is almost unheard of, except in the most extraordinary crimes. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has expressed regret over the incident, even as the US attorney in New York said Khobragade was treated well and questioned why there was more sympathy for the diplomat than the housekeeper.
State Department officials have declined to provide details about the case, citing law enforcement restrictions that prevent them from discussing it. They say they are still trying to assess what occurred.
Someone stepped in s*** at State.
On Thursday, India’s foreign minister, Salman Khurshid, took issue with the entire premise of the case and accused the housekeeper of blackmail. He told reporters that the housekeeper had threatened to go to the police unless Khobragade arranged a new passport for her, along with a work visa and a large sum of money.
‘‘We need to remember the simple fact that there is only one victim in this case,’’ Khurshid said. ‘‘That victim is Devyani Khobragade, a serving Indian diplomat on mission in the United States.’’
Khurshid did not say how much money the housekeeper allegedly demanded. But two top Indian officials said she asked for $10,000 in the presence of an immigration lawyer and two other witnesses. Both officials have close knowledge of the case but spoke on condition that their names not be published because of the sensitivity of the case.
Khurshid also said the US attorney had ignored the fact that a case was already underway in India in the dispute between the housekeeper and the diplomat. Khobragade notified authorities in New York and Delhi over the summer that she was being blackmailed, and the Delhi police launched a case against the woman, Indian officials said.
The New York Police Department does not have a record of Khobragade’s complaining of being blackmailed, though it is possible that she could have reported it to a different law enforcement agency.
Yeah, no one knows were the report is! PFFFFT!
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I'm sure the Boston Globe will help us figure this all out:
"Case against Indian diplomat disrupts a fruitful alliance" December 21, 2013
In recent years,
India has shown itself to be a quiet but vital diplomatic partner to
the United States. The world’s second-most populous country has enhanced
the effectiveness of international sanctions against Iran by reducing its own dependence on Iranian oil. It has also invested billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s reconstruction
to ease the transition as American troops draw down there. As a major
importer of Chinese products, it could lend the United States support to
calm tensions over the East China Sea.
But a heated dispute over the arrest of an Indian diplomat in New
York now threatens this fruitful alliance. Prosecutors accuse Devyani
Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, of submitting
false documents to obtain a work visa for her housekeeper. Khobragade
was arrested Dec. 12, strip-searched, and held before posting $250,000
bail. The arrest sparked outrage among the Indian public and the Indian
government, which is now calling for all charges against Khobragade to
be dropped and for her to be returned to India.
Indians are particularly incensed over the strip search, which US authorities have defended as standard procedure in all detentions.
The sanctity of a woman’s body is a matter of great emphasis in Indian
culture, and for Khobragade to be treated in this way is seen as an
affront not only to her dignity but the nation’s as a whole. Given the
cultural sensitivities, Secretary of State John Kerry has rightly phoned India’s national security advisor to express his personal regrets for this treatment.
Yet the incident does not excuse how India has retaliated
in the days since the arrest. It put American diplomats in danger by
removing a number of security barricades that have long stood in the
roads around the US embassy and residence compound in New Delhi. This is
a clear violation of India’s obligations under the Vienna Convention on
consular and diplomatic relations that must be remedied immediately.
What’s more, Khobragade should be held accountable if she has, indeed, broken US law. Prosecutors say Khobragade claimed she paid her Indian maid $9.75 an hour but actually paid her as little as $3.
This wage may be close to the norm in India, but for consular officers
to get an American visa for personal employees, they must show proof
that the applicant will receive at least US minimum wage. Khobragade has
pleaded not guilty, and there is some question over the maid’s motives. Nonetheless, the matter ought to be heard in court.
Khobragade has also claimed diplomatic immunity, but the protection
rarely extends to this type of crime. To be sure, what constitutes
diplomatic immunity can be murky, but it is supposed to apply to
official duties, while this is clearly a personal act by Khobragade.
Last year another Indian diplomat was ordered by a US judge to pay $1.5 million in damages to her former housemaid, who had been essentially treated as a slave. India’s decision to transfer Khobragade to its United Nations mission,
where she will receive greater diplomatic protections, stands in the
way of justice for her maid, but also for Khobragade — if she is
innocent.
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Globe doesn't seem very sympathetic to the diplomat as it supports the AmeriKan government. What a shock!
"Indian diplomat’s lawyer faults US agent" Associated Press, December 25, 2013
NEW YORK — A lawyer for an Indian diplomat whose arrest and strip search in New York City drew angry responses from officials in India accused US authorities Tuesday of bungling the investigation.
Good. Then it can be quietly dismissed.
Related: New Trial Ordered For Katrina Killers
Those crack Fed prosecutors, 'eh?
Attorney Daniel Arshack said the agent who drew up charges against his client made a key error in reading a form submitted on behalf of a domestic worker for Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York. She was arrested two weeks ago and charged with submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for her New York City housekeeper.
Arshack said in an e-mail that the error was in ‘‘erroneously and disastrously’’ mistaking Khobragade’s listed base salary of $4,500 per month for what she intended to pay her housekeeper.
The lawyer said Khobragade’s salary needed to be listed on the form so that US embassy officials in India would know that Khobragade had sufficient income to be able to pay her housekeeper $1,560 per month, or $9.75 per hour for a 40-hour workweek.
In court documents, authorities claim she paid her housekeeper about $3.31 per hour.
In an interview, Arshack said it became apparent as he and others closely reviewed the forms that Khobragade was required to submit to arrange for the hiring of her housekeeper that the information she had submitted had been misunderstood.
‘‘It’s incredibly unsexy kind of information, but it does go right to the heart of what this is about,’’ he said.
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It's about the way women are treated:
"India marks anniversary of fatal rape" Washington Post, December 17, 2013
NEW DELHI — The three spots that attracted most protesters Monday were the theater that the victim came out of after watching ‘‘Life of Pi’’ on the night of Dec. 16, 2012; the stop where she boarded the bus; and the highway where she and her male friend were thrown by the six rapists and left to die....
Marchers held up placards saying ‘‘Silence Hides Violence,’’ ‘‘What part of No don’t you understand.’’
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In the past year, Indians have conducted unprecedented public conversations about rampant rape and sexual harassment of women, something that had been tolerated silently. The national mood forced the government to pass a strict antirape law.
A law which has done nothing.
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Related: Sunday Globe Special: Indian Reporter Is a Rapist
Must have been only once.
"10 arrested over gang rape in India" Associated Press, December 28, 2013
NEW DELHI — Police arrested 10 people and charged six of them with raping a 21-year-old woman in southern India, an officer said Friday, a year after a fatal gang rape in New Delhi spurred debate on sexual violence in the country.
Officer Monika Bharadwaj said the arrests were made Thursday after the woman complained that she was abducted and raped while visiting a friend in Karaikal, a port city in Pondicherry state.
Bhardwaj said that the woman was hospitalized but did not suffer serious injuries.
Police also detained a juvenile male for not informing the police about the crime.
Bhardwaj said the woman was first kidnapped by three of the accused around midnight Tuesday and released after nearly three hours of captivity.
As she called her friend to pick her up after she was freed, another group of seven people came in a vehicle and took her away, Bhardwaj said.
Police were questioning the accused to find out whether they knew one another or belonged to two separate groups.
The assault came days after India marked the anniversary of the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in New Delhi that triggered nationwide protests.
The outrage spurred the government to adopt more stringent laws that doubled prison terms for rape to 20 years and criminalized voyeurism, stalking, and acid attacks. Fast-track courts have been created for rape cases.
Four attackers in the New Delhi case were sentenced to death, and a juvenile was sent to a reform center.
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Also see:
India’s court upholds antigay law
India may review antigay sex law
Maybe all Indians should become gay. Then no one will get raped.
