WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called a top Indian official to express regret about the case of an Indian diplomat strip-searched after her arrest in New York last week on charges including visa fraud, the State Department said yesterday. Kerry’s call to Indian National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, disclosed by the U.S. State Department, aimed to defuse a diplomatic crisis sparked by the Dec. 12 arrest of Devyani Khobragade on charges of visa fraud and underpaying her nanny, an Indian national.
India has been furious in its response to what it considers the degrading treatment of a senior diplomat by the United States, a country it sees as a close friend, and retaliated on Tuesday by removing security barriers at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. The barriers would offer some protection against a suicide-bomb attack.
“As a father of two daughters about the same age as Devyani Khobragade, the secretary empathizes with the sensitivities we are hearing from India about the events that unfolded after Ms. Khobragade’s arrest,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement.
