New York: As details emerge about how the New York Police Department insulted India's deputy consul general Dr Devyani Khobragade, there is a sense of outrage in India, with Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon abruptly calling off meetings with a US bipartisan delegation.
Devyani Khobragade, a diplomat enjoying immunity under the Vienna Convention, was publicly handcuffed by New York police, packed off inside a police car, strip-searched in custody, and kept inside a lockup with sex workers, drug addicts and common criminals.
All this happened even as the 1999 batch Indian Foreign Service diplomat kept protesting that she enjoyed immunity under the Vienna Convention.
The deputy consul general was going to drop her children to school, when she went through the horrendous ordeal.
A furious Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, a former IFS diplomat in her younger days, on Monday called off a meeting with a US bi-partisan Congressional delegation.
National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon also called off the meeting, but curiously, the External Affairs Ministry rolled out the red carpet with the Minister Salman Khurshid personally welcoming the US delegation.
The Lok Sabha Speaker was angry not only because Khobragade was a dalit, but because the New York policemen did this to a woman diplomat, a mother of two.
This is not an error of judgment by one police officer, but it appears to be on orders from above, say sources in the know.
India has already condemned this treatment saying it was "unacceptable".
