"For an educated middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable"

[okaawhatever]

21. There was a lot of rhetoric in that piece you posted. From what i read in several articles earlier

today, the Vienna convention mostly defines the rules for this. Also, from what I read earlier the consul general in 2011 had a lawsuit filed by his home worker against him over pay. There wasn't much info on that, but that surprised me just because I wouldn't think a domestic worker from India would challenge such a high ranking member of the Indian government in court.

The last paragraph in one of the articles quoted an Indian official as saying there was much more to this than just the pay issue. That's what I want to know. I also want to know how the US found out about it and whether there was pressure from someone to file the charges. None of it makes sense, her arrest did very little for anyone politically so it's not like anyone here is gaining politically from it. It's one of those things that's necessary but unpopular. I think there's an underlying issue and I'm not sure if the larger issue is here or in India. A competing political party may have set this up to make her and her political party look bad, or to gin up anti-American emotions.

It's tough when something that is standard procedure in one country is the end of the world in another. The process for booking someone for a crime is the same no matter who they are. The press would love to report a story of how she was given special treatment by not having to go through what others go through for the same thing. Also, the reason I doubt the strip search is that people are usually held in a booking area until it's determined they can't or won't make bail. It is only then that they are entered into the jail area where inmates are held. For someone to be sent to that area they go through quite a bit including changing clothes, often taking a shower, some jails routinely test for HIV and other communicable diseases, etc. It is only to go into that portion that one is strip searched. I volunteer at a jail occasionally and I don't have to go through the whole routine but I am searched, not strip searched, but searched. Also, strip searches don't necessarily include cavity searches so the image being conjured up may not be what happens.