India Summons U.S. Ambassador over Diplomat Detention
India summoned Friday the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi to protest against the detention of one of its senior diplomats in New York, the foreign ministry said.
"She (Ambassador Nancy Powell) has already been summoned by the Foreign Secretary (Sujatha Singh)," ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told AFP.
The move comes after the Indian embassy in Washington said its deputy consul general in New York, Devyani Khobragade, was taken into custody on Thursday while she was dropping her daughter off at school.
Indian media reports said that Khobragade was arrested and handcuffed in public for allegedly lying on the U.S. visa application for an Indian national who worked for her as a domestic help.
"We are shocked and appalled at the way she had been humiliated and this will be taken up forcefully with the U.S.," Akbaruddin told reporters.
"This kind of behavior against the Indian diplomat, a young woman with two children is entirely unacceptable.
"We will take this up strongly. The legal aspect of it is separate and there is no justification for what has happened to the young woman."
The embassy in Washington said the detention was based on "allegations raised by the officer's former India-based domestic assistant".
The domestic worker had "absconded" from her employer in June and was already the subject of an injunction issued by the High Court in Delhi, the embassy added in a statement on its website.
Source: Agence France Presse
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