New Delhi : “We were detained at the airport as always. For
one-and-a-half hours. It was nice. It always happens when I come to
America. Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself I take a
trip to America,” this is what Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan said at the
Yale University, speaking to students, in April 2012.
The actor was detained by US authorities for 90 minutes at White Plains airport near New York when he arrived on a private plane and was on the way to Yale University for a function.
India’s then foreign minister S M Krishna had said that the “policy of detention and apology by the US cannot continue". The US customs and border protection authorities later expressed "profound" apologies for the incident.
There have been several incidents in the past of prominent Indian officials being stopped or frisked at US airports. From Meera Shankar (In December 2010, India's then-ambassador) to late APJ Abdul Kalam (in 2009 America's Continental Airlines frisked and made him remove his shoes at Delhi airport in April before he boarded a flight to the US), they all have gone through the paranoid american experience.
But these were well known personalities whom we know and for whom the system reacts and stands up if anything bad happens to them, but think about thousands of common travellers who face such humiliating incidents on foreign soil without an idea of what’s going wrong with them.
One such story is of Snehaa Bhat, a young energetic Indian who had no idea of what was awaiting her at the Chicago airport when she left India on the 10th of July this year – to visit her sister living in the US.
Bhat wrote her entire experience on her blog https://musingsbythewindow.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/detained-by-chance-unbroken-by-choice/ on wordpress.com. Here is the gist of the piece that throws up some serious questions.
Read news in news 01/08/15 Srinibas Rout/Business Standard
The actor was detained by US authorities for 90 minutes at White Plains airport near New York when he arrived on a private plane and was on the way to Yale University for a function.
India’s then foreign minister S M Krishna had said that the “policy of detention and apology by the US cannot continue". The US customs and border protection authorities later expressed "profound" apologies for the incident.
There have been several incidents in the past of prominent Indian officials being stopped or frisked at US airports. From Meera Shankar (In December 2010, India's then-ambassador) to late APJ Abdul Kalam (in 2009 America's Continental Airlines frisked and made him remove his shoes at Delhi airport in April before he boarded a flight to the US), they all have gone through the paranoid american experience.
But these were well known personalities whom we know and for whom the system reacts and stands up if anything bad happens to them, but think about thousands of common travellers who face such humiliating incidents on foreign soil without an idea of what’s going wrong with them.
One such story is of Snehaa Bhat, a young energetic Indian who had no idea of what was awaiting her at the Chicago airport when she left India on the 10th of July this year – to visit her sister living in the US.
Bhat wrote her entire experience on her blog https://musingsbythewindow.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/detained-by-chance-unbroken-by-choice/ on wordpress.com. Here is the gist of the piece that throws up some serious questions.
Read news in news 01/08/15 Srinibas Rout/Business Standard
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