WASHINGTON: A diplomatic ruckus that goes totally against current form is brewing between New Delhi and Washington over the treatment of an Indian official who was arrested by US authorities for alleged visa fraud and underpaying a housekeeper she brought from India.

Devyani Khobragade , a mid-level Indian diplomat, was released by a Manhattan court on a $ 250,000 bond on Thursday evening even as the Indian embassy in Washington expressed ''strong concern'' over the unprecedented US action. Khobragade was served the arrest warrant when she was dropping her daughters to school on Thursday morning in a case that is being prosecuted by the office of the Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, an Indian-American.

While Bharara’s office portrayed the Indian diplomat as having fraudulently brought a domestic help from India by promising mandatory US wages ($ 9.75 per hour) and underpaying her ($ 3.11 per hour), Indian officials presented a more complicated picture of the case. They said the housekeeper, Sangeeta Richard, has been absconding since June this year, and ''in this context the Delhi high court had issued an-interim injunction in September to restrain Ms Richards from instituting any actions or proceedings against Dr Khobragade outside India on the terms or conditions of her employment.''

The US government had subsequently been requested to locate Ms Richard and facilitate the service of an arrest warrant, issued by the Metropolitan Magistrate of the South District Court in New Delhi under Sections 387, 420 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code, they added.

"The US side have been urged to resolve the matter with due sensitivity, taking into account the existing court case in India that has already been brought to their attention by the Government of India, and the diplomatic status of the officer concerned,'' the embassy said in a statement.

While there are evidently two sides to the story, the Indian mission was incensed at the manner in which Khobragade was arrested, ignoring both diplomatic protocol and the Indian legal due process that was initiated before the US system sprang into action. The US attorney’s move is said to be based on allegations by Sangeeta Richard, who came to the US when Devyani Khobragade, a physician-turned-diplomat, was posted as the Deputy Consul General at the Indian consulate in New York in 2012. She worked with Khobragade from November 2012 through approximately June 2013, when she reportedly left (or absconded, accorded to Indian officials) after disagreements.

Although diplomats typically enjoy immunity in line of official duty under the Vienna Convention, consular officials can be arrested or detained for a felony, pursuant to a warrant. Bharara’s office evidently intends to show that charges against Khobragade -- one count of visa fraud and one count of making false statements which carry maximum sentences of ten years and five years in prison, respectively -- are unrelated to her official work. The infractions took place at the US embassy in New Delhi when she allegedly made false declarations in course of seeking an A-3 visa ( for personal employees, domestic workers, and servants of diplomats) on behalf of Sangeeta Richard.

At the bail hearing, Khobragade pled not guilty, handed over her passport as a condition of bail, and agreed to make no contact with Richard. ''We do not at this time agree that my client is subject to prosecution'' her lawyer Daniel Arshack told the local media, arguing that Khobragade should enjoy diplomatic immunity.

Indian officials are hoping to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels given the complicated legal background to the case involving courts in India. The matter is expected be taken up with the State Department and concerned US government entities on Friday. The arrest came even as MEA officials were wrapping up what they said were very friendly and constructive meetings with their State Department counterparts at the end of foreign secretary Sujata Singh’s visit to Washington DC.

On the social media though, there was little sympathy for the diplomat, with some readers pointing to her involvement in the Adarsh housing issue. Others recalled several notorious cases of Indian families mistreating their domestic help and using them as slave labor, although the US charges against Khobragade mainly pertained to fraud and misrepresentation, not abuse.

In one of the most egregious cases the wife-husband team of Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, NRIs who owned a multi-million dollar perfume business in New York, were sentenced in 2007 to 11 and 3 years respectively for abusing their Indonesian housekeepers. Their callousness and brutality provoked such revulsion that New York tabloids dubbed Varsha Sabhnani as ''Cruella De Evil.'' The couple was also ordered to pay restitution of more than a million dollars to the women they enslaved.

While that episode brought to light what the judge in that case called modern day slave labor practice, Bharara has signaled that the US will not tolerate exploitation of foreign workers even by diplomats. ''Foreign nationals brought to the United States to serve as domestic workers are entitled to the same protections against exploitation as those afforded to United States citizens. The false statements and fraud alleged to have occurred here were designed to circumvent those protections so that a visa would issue for a domestic worker who was promised far less than a fair wage. This type of fraud on the United States and exploitation of an individual will not be tolerated,'' he said in a statement.

