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Two dozen revved-up television crews were clustered outside a VIP exit at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Friday, waiting for the flight from New York. They had been in place for two hours, and every time a trickle of passengers came into view, they all jumped up and pressed their cameras against the glass.
Few passengers in recent memory could match the celebrity of Devyani Khobragade, the diplomat who was arrested on charges of visa fraud and making false statements in New York in connection with her treatment of a domestic worker. When Khobragade's father appeared - she had been spirited away through another door - he beamed at the cameras, and told them, "I am impressed by your love and affection."
Khobragade's return seemingly brought to a climax a month-long diplomatic spat between the US and India that at times threatened to open a breach in the countries' relations. While American prosecutors stood firm, India removed security barriers at the US Embassy in New Delhi, canceled the embassy's food and alcohol import privileges, and issued new identity cards to American consular employees and their families specifying that they could be arrested for serious offenses.
Only on Friday, with the reluctant agreement from the State Department to expel a diplomat of equal rank from its embassy in New Delhi, was the matter seemingly resolved.
Yet, the incident has uncovered a gaping cultural disconnect between the world's two largest democracies. While Americans reflexively came to the defense of a maid who the authorities said was subjected to abuse, Indians reflexively sympathised with the diplomat.
This is partly because middle- and upper-class Indians typically have their own servants, who often work long hours for far less than the $573 a month that Khobragade had promised to pay. But the bigger reason, especially compelling in an election year, is national pride. In the month that has passed since Khobragade's arrest, she has been transformed into a symbol of India's sovereignty, pushed around and humiliated by an arrogant superpower.
"There is always this sense, since the end of the Soviet Union, that America is too big for its britches," said Sandip Roy, senior editor at Firstpost, a news website. "What happened to Devyani is seen in a larger, cosmic sense as that kind of unilateral thing, like, 'I will go and invade Afghanistan, and I don't care what anyone thinks.' "
The dispute was brought to a rapid finish in the last 72 hours, in what appeared to be an effort by American officials to relax tensions.
Daniel N Arshack, Khobragade's lawyer in New York, agreed that once negotiations with prosecutors broke down last weekend, "this week turned into a focus on diplomatic solutions." Arshack said that his client's husband, a college professor, and two young daughters, ages 4 and 7, who are all American citizens, had remained in New York.
The domestic worker, Sangeeta Richard, told prosecutors that she was forced to work about 94 to 109 hours a week, with limited breaks for calls and meals, according to an indictment handed up in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Last summer, it said, Richard told Khobragade she was unhappy with the work conditions and wanted to return home, but her employer refused the request and would not return her passport.
Khobragade was arrested December 12 when she was dropping off her daughters at school, and charged with misrepresenting Richard's pay to obtain a work visa for a housekeeper. Indian newspapers reported that she was strip-searched, something Indians found especially offensive, and then kept in a police holding pen with drug addicts before being released on bond. India responded with a raft of retaliatory steps, including the removal of security barriers around the embassy in New Delhi, and the case was the lead story in the Indian news media for weeks.
On Wednesday, India granted Khobragade the full immunity and privileges of a diplomat, a set of rights not accorded those posted in consulates, as she was at the time of the arrest. Though the US appealed to India to waive that immunity, India refused, and transferred her to a new position at the Foreign Ministry in Delhi. The State Department then told her to leave the US , which she did Thursday night.
Khobragade's father, Uttam Khobragade, said that his daughter was under strict orders not to give interviews, but told an anecdote that suggested she left with bitter feelings - toward Richard, toward Richard's husband and toward the US government.
"Devyani was seen off at the airport by an official of the State Department," he told reporters Friday morning. "He told Devyani that, 'Madam, I am sorry, and it was wrong.' She told the official, "You have lost a good friend. It is unfortunate. In return, you got a maid and a drunken driver. They are in, and we are out."
Khobragade's father, a retired bureaucrat who has led small protests in recent days at the American Consulate in Mumbai, said his daughter is seen so positively in India that political parties have approached both her and him to run in parliamentary elections, and that he was inclined to do so.
"At this moment, through the agony my family has gone through in the past month, you people stood with me like a rock," he said at the airport. "One thing is clear from this: If this country, with 1.2 billion people, if they come together for a cause, justice is inevitable."
Richard, in a statement issued through Safe Horizon, a victim services agency that has been representing her in New York, said that she was disappointed to learn that Ms. Khobragade had left the US . "I stood up for my rights as a worker and I only wish that Defendant Khobragade would stand up in court and address the charges against her," Richard said.
One thing that has baffled American observers - in particular Preet Bharara, the US attorney in Manhattan - is why there is so little outrage about the alleged treatment of Richard. In fact, Indian newspapers routinely carry stories about abuse of domestic workers, and many people interviewed said the sympathy would have been with the accuser had the case occurred in India.
But because it was the US , and Khobragade represented India, many people interviewed saw her treatment as a humiliation for the country.
"You have to take Devyani out of this, the support is for her position," said Subhajit Sengupta, one of the journalists who camped outside Terminal 3. "What she has done is wrong. What the US has done is also wrong. Since what the US has done is against a country, it will be taken as a matter of prestige."
Maneesha Puri, 53, said the pay given to domestic help is "our concern." And she expressed sputtering indignation that a woman of Khobragade's social position would be strip-searched.
"What kind of checking are they doing, strip-checking?" she said. "She is a diplomatic person and you strip her and check her because the maid says she was ill-treated? It's ridiculous. It's not that she had employed an American servant. This was an Indian servant."
Whether the case now fades off the national agenda depends in part on whether Khobragade speaks publicly about it.
Shweta Bajaj, one of the journalists who spent Friday night staking the diplomat out, said she had been shocked and a little mystified at the intensity of the attention given to the Khobragade case this winter. She said it was the first time in her career as a journalist that she had seen India "make such a stand against America."
"It's not even Pakistan," she said.
© 2014 The New York Times News Service
HOW THE STORY UNFOLDED
November 2012: Sangeeta Richard accompanies Devyani Khobragade to New York
June 23, 2013: Richard was found missing. Her husband (Phillip Richard) said he had no idea where she was
June 24: Office of the Foreign Missions in New York was informed and request placed to trace Sangeeta Richard
July 1: A woman claiming to be Richard's lawyer contacted Khobragade and wanted to negotiate for changing her Richard's visa status from a government visa to a normal visa. Khobragade refused to negotiate with her on phone and insisted that the caller first identify herself; the caller disconnected the phone call after this
July 5: Khobragade registered a complaint with NYPD for the crime of "aggravated harassment" with respect to the phone call received on July 1 for extortion and blackmail. No action was taken by NYPD
July 8: Richard's passport was revoked by the Consulate and notice for termination of her Personal ID was also given to OFM with effect from June 22, 2013. Technically, Richard was now staying illegally in the US
December 12: Devyani Khobragade was arrested by the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) when she went to drop her daughter to school in New York on the basis of a Second District court warrant for visa fraud. A bail was posted for $250,000 and she was released on unsecured bonds. Her passport has been retained by the police authorities and she has been asked not to leave the country or seek another travel document
December 16: External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid met the visiting US Congressional delegation and registered strong protest against the arrest of Khobragade and the manner in which it was carried out
December 17: Traffic barriers in front of US Embassy removed, India also cancels US diplomats' airport passes
December 24: India withdraws ID cards of US consular staff and puts an indefinite freeze on their import of duty-free liquor and food materials
December 26: Government announces that Khobragade was under full diplomatic immunity at the time of her arrest with her accreditation to the UN
January 8, 2013: India bars commercial activities inside US Embassies here and gives a deadline of January 16 to stop all activities.
January 8: Khobragade obtains US diplomatic G-1 visa to return to India and asks India to lift her immunity
January 9: India refuses to waiver her diplomatic immunity status. Khobragade gets indicted and asked to leave US
January 10: Khobragade lands in Delhi
