New Delhi on Thursday described as “unacceptable” the frisking at an American airport of Indian ambassador to the US Meera Shankar earlier this month. On December 4, she had been pulled out of an airport security line in the US state of Mississippi and subjected to a humiliating body search despite her announcing her identity and producing her diplomatic credentials.
Reports from the US indicated she might have been singled out for an intrusive body search as she was wearing a sari.
External affairs minister S.M. Krishna said the government would take the matter up with Washington. “Let me be frank, this is unacceptable to India. We are going to take it up with the government of the US (to ensure) such unpleasant incidents do not recur,” he told reporters outside Parliament House.
“[There are] certain well established conventions, well-established practices as to how members of the diplomatic corps are treated in a given country [but] I am rather surprised by the way the Indian ambassador to the US has been treated,” he said.
When asked if a report had been sought from the United States, Mr Krishna said: “There are various procedures through which we take it up with the US government.” The Indian embassy in Washington is taking it up with the US state department, it is learnt.
On December 4, Ms Shankar was pulled from a security line at a Mississippi airport and subjected to a body search despite the security personnel there being told of her diplomatic status.
The incident took place at Jackson-Evers International Airport where a sari-clad Ms Shankar was about to board a flight to Baltimore after attending a programme at Mississippi State University. She presented her diplomatic papers to security officers and was escorted by a Mississippi Development Authority representative as well as an airport security officer, but witnesses said she was still subjected to a hands-on search by a woman Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent.
The Clarion-Ledger newspaper of Jackson, Mississippi, said Ms Shankar was singled out from a group of 30 passengers and pulled aside, and witnesses claimed this was because she was wearing a sari.
The newspaper said Ms Shankar had requested for a private security check, but was led to a clear box for the “pat down” in full public view. “The way they pat them down — it was so humiliating,” the report quoted Tan Tsai, a research associate at Mississippi State University’s international security studies centre, who witnessed the screening, as saying. “Anybody who passed by could see it.”
Mississippi lieutenant-governor Phil Bryant, who had met Ms Shankar during her visit to the state, said he regretted the outrageous way in which she was treated. “Although I understand we need proper security measures to protect passengers in US airports, I regret the outrageous way Indian ambassador Shankar was treated by the TSA while visiting Jackson,” he said in an email to the newspaper. The lieutenant-governor is the second-highest executive in a US state, second only to the governor.
The incident embarrassed university officials. “It [Ms Shankar’s speech] was a wonderful programme, maybe the best we’ve had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing. She said, ‘I will never come back here’,” said Janos Radvanyi, chair of the Mississippi State University international studies department. “We are sending her a letter of apology.”
After arriving in Washington as India’s top diplomat in the US, Ms Shankar has been travelling extensively in America and giving lectures at universities across the country. But this was the first time she was travelling outside Washington after the new TSA regulations went into effect on November 1 this year.
The new TSA regulations allow security officers at airports to switch to more thorough — but often controversial — “pat-downs” of passengers who require hand searches. Of late the TSA has faced a lot of flak over its pat-downs and full-body scans, which it claims had been taken up due to the increased terror threat. Some US officials are understood to have sought to put a spin on the controversy by suggesting that Jackson airport does not yet have full-body scanners, thus trying to “explain” the need for a “pat-down” of the ambassador.
In the past, many prominent Indians, including Union ministers, have faced uncomfortable moments at US airports. In September 2010, minister of state for civil aviation Praful Patel was questioned by the immigration authorities at Chicago’s O’Hare airport after his name and date of birth matched that of another Praful Patel who was on an American watchlist.