The curious case of Krittika Biswas, a high school student from India who had diplomatic immunity, but was jailed by the New York Police Department for a crime of "cyber bullying" that she didn't commit, raises many questions.
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 students from India at the now defunct Tri-Valley University (TVU) in California, were hounded by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in many cases for no fault of theirs. The two incidents seem to suggest that the US is increasingly becoming a country of officials who act with impunity, with brains outsourced to Capitol Hill.
Biswas has now given up plans to enrol in a premier institute in New York to study math as a major. She plans to instead enrol in a college in India. It's the State Department which has the unpleasant task of trying to sort out the diplomatic mess such incidents lead to. In the case of Biswas, it's in the form of a bizarre statement made by State Department spokesperson Mark Toner, that the US does not confer diplomatic immunity from jurisdiction or inviolability to family members of consular officers.
"The Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs provides that consular officers are not liable to arrest or detention pending trial, except in the case of a felony where a court warrant is required. But that provision does not apply to family members," said Toner, adding that the incident would of course, not hurt the growing Indo-US relations. The secretary of Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said in New Delhi that she was "very sympathetic" to Biswas' plight.
"I think that I can sympathise with this young woman who was apparently caught up in a situation not of her own making," Napolitano said at a joint press conference with Home Minster P Chidambaram, who himself expressed concern at the way Biswas was treated.
The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, constituted in 1963, and to which the US is a signatory, clearly specifies under its articles 36, 40, 41 and 53 the code of conduct towards foreign nationals who are detained, as well as the privileges accorded to family members of consular officers, who have the same diplomatic immunity when it comes to prosecution in a foreign land. It bars them from arrest except in a serious case of felony.
So how did Toner come to such a conclusion? Did the Barack Obama administration convey the changes in the almost five-decade-old rule to the Indian government prior to the Biswas incident or are they now trying to cover up their mishandling of the case? Who had the authority to force such a change in the first place?
Indian Intervention
The US, more than any other nation on earth, needs to ensure that the Vienna Convention rules on diplomatic and consular relations remain sacrosanct, as they have more diplomats than any other country, who work in places where the legal system is harsh.
In the US, even retail outlets have managers to resolve customer issues and to provide judicial solutions to disagreements. So why didn't the NYPD know how to behave with a teenager? The city has for long dealt with parking violations by cars bearing diplomatic plates, so why did the administration fail to show a humane approach to an 18-year-old with a diplomatic passport?
Ambassador Prabhu Dayal, India's consul general in New York, says he made a fervent call to the NYPD to make the case for diplomatic immunity for Biswas to have her released, only to have the NYPD stall him by putting him on a conference call with the State Department, which led to a stalemate.
Where were the bosses who could have used discretionary authority to decide on the spot to release Biswas till the matter of how to interpret the Vienna Convention rules on consular relations was sorted out? Did the NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and the mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg know what was going on in the diplomatic capital of the world where they live?
Now it has come to light that the Indian ambassador Meera Shankar and external affairs minister SM Krishna, who was in the US at the time of Biswas' arrest, knew of her predicament, and tried to reason with the State Department through the night of February 8, to have her released, but to no avail.
"I distinctly remember that I had intervened to get the girl released; subsequently we took it up very strongly with the State Department," said Krishna, commenting on the issue during a visit to Ethiopia. "I expect the US to follow international norms, and well accepted practices and conventions."
Legal Help
It was only when Biswas' attorney Ravi Batra, a legal luminary in New York, approached the Queens District Attorney Judge Richard Brown, a day after Biswas was arrested, that the case was dismissed.
"The only hero in this sordid tale is Judge Richard A Brown," says Batra, who adds that the Indian embassy and the State Department can issue whatever statements they may want to make, but the fact remains that when he approached Brown, he was told that the Queens District Attorney's office had not got any communication on Biswas from any quarters.
The question remains as to why did Krishna and the Indian embassy in Washington, DC, not sort out the issue of privileges accorded to Indian diplomats and their families over the last three months. Why are they coming out only now after a lawsuit was filed by Biswas? The worst is over, and it remains to be seen how much money, if at all, she ends up making in court.
And the larger question which is probably going to be resolved behind closed doors in New Delhi and Washington, DC, is that of diplomatic immunity for the families of diplomats stationed in both the countries.
