Source: BBC
India has ordered a series of reprisals against the United States amid a worsening row over the arrest of one of its diplomats in New York.
Security barricades around the US embassy in Delhi have been removed and a visiting US delegation was snubbed.
The diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, was handcuffed upon arrest last week and strip-searched, Indian reports say.
She denies visa fraud and making false statements over allegations that she underpaid her Indian maid.
The maid had complained the diplomat was paying her less than the minimum stipulated under US visa requirements.
What is diplomatic immunity?
- A form of legal immunity that ensures diplomats are exempt from prosecution under the host country’s laws
- Agreed as international law in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961)
- Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) a consul is afforded a variation of diplomatic immunity called consular immunity
- It guarantees immunity from the host country’s laws only with respect to acts related to consular duties
US officials say standard procedures were followed during the arrest of Ms Khobragade, who appeared in court on Friday and was freed on bail.
Ms Khobragade will challenge her arrest on grounds of diplomatic immunity, her lawyer said.
The US state department said that Ms Khobragade does not have full diplomatic immunity.
It said under the UN’s Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, she is immune from arrest only for crimes committed in connection with her work.
‘A snub’
India’s government has said it is “shocked and appalled” at the manner in which Ms Khobragade, its deputy consul general in New York, was “humiliated” in the US.
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Categories: Asia, United States
What is the need to ‘strip-search’ a lady (diplomat or not) for a violation of a minimum wage. Is there a danger that she hides the surplus cash some where?