New Delhi: India today said its Deputy Consul General in New York Devyani Khobragade was trapped in a “conspiracy” and accused US of a fraud by granting a visa to the family of her absconding maid even as the diplomat has now been transferred to the country's Mission to UN to give her fuller diplomatic immunity.
“She is innocent... It is not the illegality that she (Khobragade) is accused of, but the illegality she refused to oblige,” External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid told Parliament about Khobragade, who was arrested last week on visa fraud charges as she was dropping her daughter to school and released on a USD 250,000 bond only after pleading not guilty in court.
A 1999-batch IFS officer, Khobragade was put through both strip and cavity searches, procedures normally used for criminals, evoking a sharp reaction from India which initiated a slew of steps to downgrade the privileges enjoyed by the US diplomats and their families including withdrawing airport passes and stopping import clearances.
Narrating the sequence of events that began in June-July this year, Khurshid said the maid servant disappeared and a case was lodged with New York Police Department but no action was taken.
