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India-US diplomatic row escalates

New Delhi vows to bring back arrested diplomat, 'restore dignity'

Agencies
India vowed yesterday to bring one of its diplomats home at any price after her arrest in New York last Thursday, as she told how she broke down in tears after being stripped and cavity-searched.
According to local media reports yesterday, she has been transferred to India's UN mission in New York to give her full diplomatic immunity.
The transfer of deputy consular general Devyani Khobragade to the United Nations Permanent Mission came after Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid pledged to “restore the dignity" of the diplomat who was strip-searched during her 48-hour detention in New York, reported AFP.
"To ensure diplomatic immunity to Devyani, India has shifted her to the United Nations Permanent Mission in New York," The Times of India
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and other media reported.
Khurshid's promise came a day after India announced a series of reprisals and despite an overnight plea by the LIS State Department not to allow the row to damage relations.
"It is my duty to bring the lady back," Khurshid told lawmakers.
"We have to restore her dignity and I will do it at any cost," he added.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh then further stoked the furore by calling her arrest "deplorable" in brief comments reported by the Press Trust of India.
The row was triggered by the arrest of Khobragade, 39, on charges of visa fraud and making false statements about how much she paid her maid, an Indian national.
The LIS Marshals Service confirmed on Tuesday that Khobragade had been strip-searched like other prisoners after being detained while dropping her two children off at school.
In an email to colleagues published yesterday, Khobragade said she told arresting authorities that she had diplomatic immunity - only to suffer repeated searches and to be jailed with "common criminals".
"I must admit that I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, in a hold-up with common criminals and drug addicts were all being
imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity," she said in the email.
"I got the strength to regain composure and remain dignified, thinking that I must represent all of my colleagues and my cou n try w i th confidence and pride."
The revelation that a high-ranking diplomat could be subjected to such treatment while on a posting to the United States has caused huge offence in a country that sees itself as an emerging world power.
With a general election just months away, the ruling Gongress and the nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are both keen to be seen as standing up to the United States over the issue.
Yashwant Sinha, a former BJP foreign minister, said Tuesday that India should now arrest American gays who were in India after a ruling last week that upheld a colonial-era ban on homosexuality.
"India takes on Uncle Sam," read the front-page headline of The Hindustan Times, while the Mail Today splashed with "Bulldozer Diplomacy" on top of a picture of a digger dragging away concrete barricades outside the US embassy on Tuesday.
Indian police and government officials declined repeated requests for comment on why the barricades were taken away, but Indian television networks, citing unnamed sources, said their removal was one of several retaliatory measures India planned, reported Reuters.
US consular officials have also been told to return identity cards that speed up travel into and through India. Import clearances for them, including for alcohol, have been suspended.
With India stripping US diplomats and their families of such privileges, the US said it had conveyed at high levels its expectation that India would continue to fulfil its obligations under the Convention and ensure safety and security of its diplomats.
India yesterday said it was fully committed to ensuring security of all diplomats, including those from the US, within confines of its law and pledged full implementation of the Vienna Convention while asking other countries to do the same.
The ultra-nationalist Shiv Sena organisation staged an anti-US protest yesterday, shouting slogans such as "Down with Barack Obama!"
State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf admitted the arrest was a "sensitive issue" but insisted it was a "separate and isolated incident" which should not be allowed to affect broader ties.
Harf added that as a consular official, Khobragade does not have full diplomatic immunity but has consular immunity applicable only to her professional duties.
Khobragade is alleged to have paid her worker just $3.31 an hour despite signing a contract to pay her some three times that amount.