Devyani Khobragade
New Delhi, Dec. 13: Diplomat Devyani Khobragade has written to her foreign service colleagues asking them to prod the government into demanding from President Barack Obama, who is visiting next month, that Washington drop charges against her.
Khobragade was charged with immigration violation and human rights abuses when she was arrested in New York last December.
In an email circulated among a Google Group of IFS officers, Khobragade said the charges were an insult to India. She said her "case must be included in the political dialogue" when Obama meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi here in late January.
The Google Group counts as its members most IFS officers and many retired diplomats. Khobragade is now a director in the Development Partnership Administration, the foreign aid arm of the external affairs ministry. Her husband, Akash Singh Rathore, continues to teach philosophy in the US.
Her email, which suggests she is unhappy with the foreign office's efforts to bring closure to the charges against her and complains about her family's struggles, does not appear to have won her many friends, either among seniors or younger Indian diplomats.
"We all supported her when she was arrested but increasingly, many of us are starting to conclude that her complaints have become all about her gratification and are driven by her own sense of entitlement," a mid-rung diplomat three years senior to Khobragade in the foreign service said.
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