India told US that Devyani’s maid issue not subject to American rules

Editor’s Note: The following article and the note verbale sent by Indian embassy in Washington to the US State Department, a First Post exclusive, should be read as a sequel to an earlier article published here .

Surprisingly it took a month and four days for the Indian embassy in Washington to send a formal response to the US State Department’s letter regarding the Devyani Khobragade case. This was the State Department’s first written communication in this case and remains the only one till date.

The Indian embassy in Washington responded orally the very next day after receiving the State Department’s letter, official sources said today. It took a little over a month for the Indian embassy to send a formal written response as the case is subjudice in India and the response had to be first vetted by law officers.

The Indian embassy’s four-page response is being reproduced in full for the first time here.

Despite the State Department’s business-like letter, the Indian embassy’s response is warm and polite. Obviously, neither the Indian embassy in Washington nor the Indian Ministry of External Affairs had a clue about the scale and magnitude of the Barack Obama administration’s impending action against Khobragade which was eventually taken a couple of months later.

Also, the Indian embassy’s communication to the State Department was in the nature of a note verbale, a higher degree of government-to-government communication in contrast to the State Department’s individual-to-individual letter.

Finer points about diplomatese apart, the Indian embassy’s response makes three main points, all of which were ignored by the Americans.

One, the Indian note verbale contends that the matter of Khobragade’s maid Sangeeta Richards and the latter’s allegations against the former “are issues that are relevant to the relationship between the Government of India and its employees” and “not subject to US regulation or adjudication.”

Two, the Delhi High Court was seized with the Khobragade-Richards matter and the court had issued an anti-suit injunction restraining Richard from approaching any court or forum or authority in the US for any matter arising out of her employment in the US. “It cannot be the argument of any party that a foreign government must adjudicate in a matter between Indian citizens that stands placed before the judiciary of India,” the note verbale contends.

Three, the Indian embassy urged the State Department to help facilitate the repatriation of Richard to India and to forestall her effort to illegally emigrate to the US.

Well placed sources tell this writer that the Indian government has taken and will continue to take the Khobragade case very seriously and will take the counter action launched in the wake of her arrest to its logical conclusion with respect to the ongoing investigations into the financial affairs of the US entities, diplomats and other staff in India.

Also, it is worth stressing here that the Indian responses and concerns with regard to the Khobragade incident and the aftermath enjoy support from all major political parties, including the BJP, the Left, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi had prominently pitched the Khobragade issue when US ambassador in India, Nancy Powell, called on him in Gandhinagar a few days ago. The Obama administration has already softened its stand on Modi and said it is ready to do business with whosoever is in power in India.

US defence secretary Chuck Hagel met India’s National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon in Munich recently. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz is scheduled to visit India on March 10. However, the Indian officials have made it clear that it cannot be business as usual with the US till all criminal charges against Khobragade are withdrawn.