US secretary of state Hillary Clinton expressed concern on Thursday over an incident where Meera Shankar, the Indian ambassador to the United States, was pulled out of a security queue last week by a female agent for a thorough pat-down search at a Mississippi airport, despite having shown her diplomatic papers.
Witnesses said Shankar, who was returning after giving a speech at the Mississippi State University, asked for a private screening, but her search was conducted in a glass box.
“I met with the Indian ambassador and other representatives of the Indian Government on Tuesday,” Clinton told reporters on Thursday. “We will be looking into it and trying to determine both what happened and what we could do to prevent such incidents in the future.”
Clinton also said she would respond to Indian external affairs minister SM Krishna, who has termed the incident “unacceptable”, saying the matter will be taken up with the American government.
Virander Paul, spokesman for the Indian embassy in Washington, said the state department had reached out to the ambassador and has regretted what happened.
There was no sign of regret however in US homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano’s response to the incident. “It was a pat-down that followed our procedures, and I think it was appropriate under the circumstances,” Napolitano told reporters.
She said there are protocols in which if US authorities are notified before a passenger with special credentials gets to an airport, they can try to expedite their security check. “In this particular instance, that protocol had not been utilised,” she said. “I think what was done by the... officer was done appropriately and by the book.”
Napolitano hasn’t apologised so far to Shankar although she was quick to apologise to India’s civil aviation minister Praful Patel in September after his name popped up on a terrorist watch list at the Chicago O’Hare Airport.
