India diplomat indicted, leaves US

An Indian diplomat accused of lying about how much she paid her housekeeper was asked to leave the United States on Thursday after she was indicted on two criminal charges and Indian authorities refused to waive immunity, authorities said.

Devyani Khobragade, 39, was charged by a federal grand jury in New York City with visa fraud and making false statements in a case that has triggered an outcry in India. She's accused of fraudulently obtaining a work visa for her New York housekeeper.

Khobragade left the country Thursday night, a U.S. government official in Washington said.

The official, who was not authorized to speak about the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. accepted India's request to accredit her to the United Nations, which confers broader immunity than what she enjoyed as a consular official. It would be almost unprecedented for the U.S. to deny such a request unless the diplomat was a national security risk.

The United States asked the government of India to waive the immunity, but the Indians refused, the official said.

The United States then "requested her departure" from the country, the official said.

Authorities say Khobragade claimed to pay her Indian maid $4,500 per month but actually gave her far less than the U.S. minimum wage. The indictment said Khobragade had made multiple false representations to U.S. authorities, or caused them to be made, to obtain a visa for a personal domestic worker. She planned to bring the worker to the United States in September 2012 when she worked at the Consulate General of India in New York, according to the indictment.

Her arrest last month sparked outrage in India after revelations that she was strip-searched and thrown in a cell with other criminal defendants before being released on $250,000 bail.

Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York, has maintained her innocence.

In a letter, prosecutors said there was no need for an arraignment because Khobragade had "very recently" been given diplomatic immunity status. They also mistakenly said she'd already left the United States. But Daniel Arshack, a lawyer for Khobragade, said in a statement soon after that his client was home with her children.

"The prosecutor’s false statement this afternoon that Dr. Khobragade had left the country is emblematic of the series of blunders which has contributed to the false charges brought against her," Arshack told Al Jazeera via email.

A spokesman for prosecutors later clarified that the mix-up came because the State Department advised that she was to have left the country Thursday afternoon.

The charges will remain pending until she can be brought to court to face them, either through a waiver of immunity or her return to the U.S. without immunity status, the letter from the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

"We will alert the court promptly if we learn that the defendant returns to the United States in a non-immune capacity, at which time the government will proceed to prosecute this case and prove the charges in the indictment," the letter said.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press