The Indian Embassy asked the U.S. last week to protect the diplomatic rights of an Indian diplomat who was arrested for visa fraud.
Now, further incensed after learning the female diplomat was strip-searched, India has retaliated against U.S. diplomats and lawmakers.
U.S. consulate representatives and their families in India were ordered Tuesday to hand over their diplomatic ID cards and airport passes. All import duty waivers, including liquor import permits, were taken away, The Indian Express reported. Concrete security barricades outside the Embassy in Delhi were also removed.
Indian officials also refused to attend planned meetings with U.S. Congressmen, The Telegraph reported. Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, two contenders to be India's next prime minister, cancelled meetings with U.S. policy makers. So did India's home minister and national security advisor.
They're against the "humiliating" and "barbaric" treatment of Devyani Khobragade, the deputy consul general to the U.S. who was arrested Dec. 12.
Khobragade, 39, is accused of paying her housekeeper only $3.31 an hour. The diplomat, who's a supporter of women's rights, wrote on a visa application for the housekeeper that she would pay her close to $10 an hour, but reduced the amount after she came to the U.S. Khobragade pleaded not guilty and is currently out on $250,000 bond.
Khobragade described the details of her arrest in an email to her colleagues.
"I must admit that I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, hold up with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity," she wrote.
India feels Khobragade's treatment is a violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity, The Telegraph reported. The U.S. says diplomatic immunity only applies to work-related situations and that Khobragade's treatment was protocol.
