Envoy’s airport search will be taken up with US embassy: Rao

NEW DELHI - India would “certainly be speaking to the US embassy” regarding the “pat down” search that Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar was subjected to at an airport, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said here Friday.

“We will certainly be speaking to the US embassy. We are already in touch regarding previous instances but not exactly like this one. We have an ongoing conversation,” Rao told reporters when asked about the “pat down” search on Shankar in the US.

“We have asked for a report from the Indian embassy. We are still to get it,” she said on the sidelines of a seminar on public diplomacy here.

When asked about US officials’ assertion that diplomats were not exempt from the searches, she said: “We are still awaiting the report.”

On Dec 4, Shankar was subjected to a rigorous public “pat down” at the Jackson-Evers International Airport after a visit as a guest of the Mississippi State University. It was the second time in three months that the ambassador faced such screening.