NEW YORK, (Reuters) – India asked the United Nations yesterday to accredit a New York-based diplomat who was arrested for visa fraud, in an apparent attempt to defuse a crisis with the United States over her treatment by U.S. authorities who strip searched her.
A U.N. spokesman said the organization had received an official request from New Delhi to accredit Devyani Khobragade as a member of India’s permanent U.N. mission in what seemed to be a move to give her a stronger form of diplomatic immunity.
Khobragade’s arrest has enraged India, which is demanding that all charges be dropped against her. Indian protesters ransacked a Domino’s Pizza in a Mumbai suburb in anger at her detention this month for visa fraud and underpayment of her housekeeper.
She was strip searched at a U.S. District Court building in downtown Manhattan and placed in a holding cell. As India’s deputy consul general in New York, she only had limited diplomatic immunity from prosecution.
Indian media said the request to transfer her to the United Nations was aimed at ending the stand-off with the United States in the hopes that Khobragade’s new diplomatic status could allow New Delhi to bring her home without facing charges.
Diplomatic sources said that broader immunity could make it harder to follow through on a prosecution against her.
