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Diplomatic immunity ‘not for’ officers’ kin Washington, May 26 "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," the State Departments spokesman, Mark Toner, told reporters at his daily news conference here yesterday. Family members of the diplomats do carry diplomatic passports, he acknowledged but diplomatic immunity does not apply to them, he noted. "This is different for consular officers versus those in the embassy. There's different categories," Toner said. At a news conference in New York, Krittika Biswas, daughter of the vice counsel at the Indian Consulate in Manhattan, Debashish Biswas, claimed that she was ill-treated in prison. Biswas alleged that she was not allowed to use the bathroom for a long-time when she was in custody at the 107th precinct. "Eventually, I had to go in front of everyone," Biswas said, referring to a small toilet that was in the cell occupied by other persons. Her lawyer Ravi Batra said that her more than 24-hour arrest on February 8 was a violation of international law, federal law as well as state and city law. Batra said that neither Debashish Biswas, father of the girl, nor the Consulate General of India, Prabhu Dayal, were informed of the arrest. Batra also claimed that Biswas, 18, had diplomatic immunity that prevented her from being arrested. But the Consulate General said US authorities informed him that the immunity did not extend to family members of the diplomat. "That did not cut any ice," he said. It later emerged that Biswas did not send the emails and the school authorities eventually allowed her back to the school after the real culprit was found. — PTI Concern conveyed to US
New Delhi: New Delhi has conveyed to the US its concern over the manner in which an Indian diplomat's daughter was arrested in New York. Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar, who is here for the launch of the Indo-US Homeland Security Dialogue tomorrow, said the wrongful arrest of Krittika Biswas, daughter of the vice counsel at the Indian Consulate in Manhattan, Debashish Biswas, had been taken up with Washington "very seriously". "It is a case which the Embassy had taken up very seriously with the US government. When she was apprehended, we worked through the night as we got the information in the night. We woke up the US officials in the night and got her released the next day," she told reporters after a meeting with Home Minister P Chidambaram here. "Now she has sought permission to file a case against the US authorities and she is fighting it. Subsequent to her release, we have conveyed our concern to the US government about the way she was treated. The case is obviously a matter of concern to all of us," Shankar said. —
TNS
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