New Delhi: Angry over the "despicable" and "barbaric" treatment meted out to its diplomat, India Tuesday asked US diplomats to turn in their IDs even as Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde declined to meet a visiting US Congressional delegation.
Rahul Gandhi and Shinde Tuesday refused to meet the US Congressional delegation, comprising Republican and Democrat members, to highlight India's strong disapproval of the arrest, handcuffing and strip search of diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York last week.
US diplomats in consulates have been asked to surrender their IDs, a source told IANS.
On Monday, Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon cancelled their meetings separately with the visiting US delegation.
The NSA is known to have described the treatment meted out to Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York, as "barbaric" and "despicable", a source told IANS.
Khobragade was strip searched, confined to a cell with drug addicts and also subjected to DNA swabbing, sources confirmed to IANS
Speaker Meira Kumar, herself a former Indian career diplomat, declined to meet the US delegation "as a sign of displeasure" over the treatment meted out Khobragade.
