39-year-old Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general, was arrested after dropping off her daughter at school last Thursday and detained in New York on visa fraud charges, CNN reported. Khobragade was held in a cell with other females and strip-searched following her arrest, the U.S. Marshals Service said. She was soon freed on a $250,000 bond after pleading not guilty to the charges, according to the BBC.
Khobragade has since moved to India's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, an Indian external affairs ministry official.
The US state department said that Ms Khobragade did not have full diplomatic immunity.
The Indian government, however, said it was "shocked and appalled at the manner" in which Khobragade was "humiliated."
"India is forcefully taking up with the US the treatment of the diplomat. It is completely unacceptable," ministry of external affairs spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told reporters in Delhi last Friday.
"The US side have been urged to resolve the matter with due sensitivity, taking into account... the diplomatic status of the officer concerned," the Indian embassy in Washington said in a statement.
Khobragade "allegedly caused a materially false and fraudulent document to be presented, and materially false and fraudulent statements to be made, to the US department of state in support of a visa application for an Indian national employed as a babysitter and housekeeper at her home in New York," according to New York law enforcement authorities.
Khbragade faces a maximum sentence of 10 years for visa fraud and five years for making false statements, if found guilty, according to news reports. She appeared in court last week.
In a series of reprisals, security barricades around the U.S. embassy in Delhi were removed and a visiting U.S. delegation was snubbed,
"When US citizens come here we show them so much respect. We must rethink on this," said one Indian MP, according to the BBC. Senior Congress party minister Anand Sharma, speaking on behalf of the government, said the arrest was a "matter of national outrage".
