Friday, January 10, 2014

Strip Searched Indian Diplomat Leaves U.S. and other stories from CBS

Handcuffing and strip searching people on the slightest pretext was ruled Constitutional by the Supreme Court last year

This flap with India should not blind us to the fact that police in other countries inflict just as many, if not more, indignities and even brutality as a daily affair than they do in the U.S.

The problem here is that Indians feel someone like the woman involved should have been shown more respect and a sense of Diplomatic Immunity...I am inclined to agree with them

CBS/AP January 9, 2014, 10: 50 PM

Strip-searched India diplomat leaves U.S.

December 2013 photo shows Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general, during the India Studies Stony Brook University fund raiser event at Long Island, N.Y. AP

NEW YORK -- An Indian diplomat accused of lying about how much she paid her housekeeper was charged and asked to leave the country Thursday after being by indicted on federal charges in a case that has triggered an outcry in India.

Devyani Khobragade, 39, India's deputy consul general in New York, flew out of the United States late Thursday, a U.N. diplomatic source told Reuters. The Indian Foreign Ministry said earlier that Khobragade was being transferred to New Delhi.
A U.S. government official said the United States accepted India's request to accredit her to the United Nations, which confers broader immunity than what she enjoyed as a consular official.

The United States asked the government of India to waive the immunity, but the Indians refused, the official said.
"As a result of her diplomatic status having been recognized, the federal court today recognized Dr. Khobragade's right to travel and is pleased to be returning to her country," her defense lawyer, Daniel Arshack, said in a statement.
"She knows she has done no wrong and she looks forward to assuring that the truth is known," Arshack said.

The statement came after a federal grand jury in Manhattan indicted Khobragade on charges of visa fraud and making false statements.

The indictment said Khobragade had made multiple false representations to U.S. authorities, or caused them to be made, to obtain a visa for a personal domestic worker.

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Protests in India grow over U.S. treatment of diplomat

Investigators said Khobragade claimed to pay her Indian maid $4,500 per month but actually gave her far less than the U.S. minimum wage.

The diplomat's arrest last month sparked outrage in India after revelations that she was strip-searched and thrown in a cell with other criminal defendants before being released on $250,000 bail.

Khobragade has maintained her innocence. In India, the housekeeper has been vilified and accused of blackmailing her employer.

The housekeeper, Sangeeta Richard, said in her first public statements Thursday that she had decided to come to the U.S. to work for a few years to support her family, then return to India.

"I never thought that things would get so bad here, that I would work so much that I did not have time to sleep or eat or have time to myself," she said in a statement released by the anti-trafficking group Safe Horizon.

She tried to return to India because of how she'd been treated, she said, but her request was denied.
"I would like to tell other domestic workers who are suffering as I did - you have rights and do not let anyone exploit you," Richard said.

CBS/AP