0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
India’s government – incensed over the arrest of a female diplomat in Manhattan last week – has retaliated by removing the security barriers in front of the US embassy in New Delhi, the country’s main news agency reported.Tow trucks and a backhoe were used to haul off the long concrete barriers — designed to prevent cars from speeding up to the embassy’s gates – that had been in front of the compound. The Press Trust of India reported that the government was behind the move.We got orders to remove the concrete barriers,” said a cop near the embassy.Asked why, he sniffed, “They were obstructing traffic on the road.”The heavy-handed retaliation was sparked by the arrest of Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general for political, economic, commercial and women’s affairs in Manhattan, for allegedly mistreating her female nanny.The feds charged that Khobragade lied on a visa application to get the Indian national into the United States and then paid her a paltry $3.31 an hour.Khobragade was handcuffed and reportedly strip-searched after her bust, treatment considered particularly demeaning for a woman in her country.India’s officials fumed that she was even held in a cell with drug addicts.India’s national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, branded Khobragade’s arrest “barbaric.”He and leaders of the country’s two main political parties refused to meet a delegation of US lawmakers visiting India this week over the flap.One of the politicians who was supposed to be at the meeting later tweeted, “Refused to meet the visiting USA delegation in solidarity with our nation, protesting ill-treatment meted (out) to our lady diplomat in USA.’’In retaliation for Khobragade’s arreset, India’s government also was threatening to downgrade privileges for some US embassy workers there — and even demand information about how much they pay their own Indian household staff, PTI reported.A high-ranking official of the Bharatiya Janata Party – currently the largest opposition group in Indian and favored to win upcoming elections — urged India to arrest the domestic partners of any gay US officials there.India’s Supreme Court, in a ruling last week, essentially deemed homosexuality there illegal.
