US law enforcement goes over the top

The case of the Indian junior diplomat who was arrested and strip-searched in New York recently has inflamed passions in both countries. In India the focus has been on the insult and humiliation to Devyani Khobagade, the Indian Deputy Consul General in New York, while in the United States and other Western countries the emphasis has been on her alleged crime, claiming on a visa application that her maid was to be paid a certain amount while actually paying her considerably less.

While there have been demonstrations in front of the US Embassy in New Delhi and calls for counter reprisals against American diplomats in India, Ritwik Deo, writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper raged against India’s privileged and cossetted middle class for believing itself above the law and always expecting special treatment.

Ms Khobagade is not the victim, Deo wrote. Her maid is the victim. Indians are missing the point.

Except that what has being arrested, handcuffed, held in detention, strip searched and cavity searched got to do with the offence of visa fraud? Was there a need to arrest her at all? Would it not have been sufficient to have summonsed her to appear at a police station or a court to explain herself?

To this reporter, used over many years to the Australian way of doing things, US law enforcement has always seemed way over the top with defendants handcuffed for minor traffic offences and appearing in court in leg-irons.

In Australia Ms Khobagade would most certainly have been ordered to pay her maid at the stated rate with full back pay and possibly further compensation; she may have faced further prosecution for the fraudulent statement, and her Embassy would have heard about it. But it is highly unlikely she would have spent any time in detention being subjected to indignities to her person.  

This could be passed off as an isolated incident involving an Indian official in the United States, except that it is not. In April I wrote about the detention and apparent harassment of Uttar Pradesh Urban Development Minister Mohammad Azam Khan at Boston’s Logan Airport.

The Foreign Minister in the former BJP Federal Government, George Fernandes, was strip-searched twice in Dulles Airport while on an official visit and India’s then Ambassador to Washington, Meera Shankar, was given a public ‘pat-down’ at an airport in Mississippi in 2010, apparently singled out from a group of about 30 passengers because she was wearing a sari.

This diplomatic row will blow over. US Secretary of State, John Kerry has telephoned Indian National Security Adviser, Shivshankar Menon to “express regret” over the incident. In diplomatic speak this is the apology you make when you are not making an apology. Mr Kerry also hoped the incident would not harm US-India relations.

There lies the crux of the matter. For all the breast-beating about Ms Khobagade not being above the law and grossly underpaying her maid, the fact is when you start actions against a person who is in any way a representative of another country you will face consequences, whether your actions are justified or not.

Certainly justice has to be done, but surely in a less dramatic fashion than that occasioned in this case by Manhattan law enforcement officials.