{Devyani Khobragade, an Indian diplomat whose recent arrest in New York stirred outrage in her home country, was allowed to leave the United States on Thursday after being indicted on two criminal charges related to her housekeeper.}
Khobragade, who was India’s deputy consul-general in New York, was arrested on Dec. 12 and indicted Thursday by a grand jury for visa fraud and making false statements about how much she paid her housekeeper.
The US State Department had asked India’s government to waive Khobragade’s immunity so that she could be prosecuted, a US government official said on the condition of anonymity, but the request was refused. The State Department then told her she had to leave the country.
At a court hearing late Thursday, Khobragade’s lawyer, Daniel Arshack, told US District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin that he had asked his client not to leave the country until he had informed the judge presiding over her case that she had diplomatic immunity.
Arshack said Khobragade, whose nighttime flight from Kennedy Airport was delayed a couple of hours before finally taking off, was “pleased to be returning to her country.”
“Her head is held high,” the lawyer said. “She knows she has done no wrong and she looks forward to assuring that the truth is known.”
Allegations of mistreatment
Authorities say Khobragade claimed to pay her Indian maid $4,500 per month but gave her far less than the US minimum wage. The indictment said Khobragade had made multiple false representations to US authorities, or caused them to be made, in order to obtain a visa for a personal domestic worker.
Her arrest set off protests in India after it surfaced that she had been handcuffed and strip-searched. The dispute soured broader US-India relations, leading to sanctions against American diplomats in New Delhi and the postponement of visits to India by senior US officials and another by a US business delegation.
The maid, Sangeeta Richard, said in her first public statements Thursday that she had decided to come to the US to work for a few years to support her family and then return to India.
“I never thought that things would get so bad here, that I would work so much that I did not have time to sleep or eat or have time to myself,” she said in a statement released by the anti-trafficking group Safe Horizon.
She tried to return to India because of how she’d been treated, she said, but her request was refused.
“I would like to tell other domestic workers who are suffering as I did – you have rights and do not let anyone exploit you,” said Richard, who has been vilified in India and accused of blackmailing her employer.
Khobragade has denied the accusations.
In a letter to the judge on Thursday, prosecutors said there was no need for an arraignment because Khobragade had “very recently” been given diplomatic immunity status; they also mistakenly said she’d already left the United States.
A spokesman for prosecutors later clarified that the mix-up came because the State Department advised that she was to have left the country Thursday afternoon.
The charges will remain pending until she can be brought to court to face them, through a waiver of immunity or her return to the US without immunity status, the letter from the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara said.
Arshack said he was pleased the State Department had recognized Khobragade’s diplomatic immunity.
He said the confusion over whether his client had left the country was “emblematic of the series of blunders which has contributed to the false charges brought against her.” He said Khobragade did not make any false statements and paid her domestic worker what she was entitled to be paid.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, REUTERS)
Leave a Reply