Gurgaon rape case: New Delhi may expel Saudi diplomat as last resort

While these steps will be looked at as “a last resort”, sources said, there is also a possibility of the Saudi Embassy “withdrawing” the diplomat.

Ashoor, in his 50s, is the deputy head of the visa section in the Saudi Embassy, and is believed to have shifted to the embassy premises or with colleagues after police “rescued” the two women from his apartment in Gurgaon on Monday. “If he leaves India, the embassy will inform us. They haven’t done so yet,” a source said.

According to sources, Ashoor is a key diplomat who holds additional charge at the Saudi Ambassador’s office.

Until the rape controversy, Ashoor lived in Gurgaon with his wife and three children, sources said.

They added that the Saudi Ambassador is yet to respond to a request from the Ministry of External Affairs’s chief of protocol Jaideep Mazumdar on Thursday to cooperate with the police investigations.

“He was told clearly that Haryana police wants to question the diplomat as there are allegations against him,” a source said, adding that India is yet to specifically ask for waiving diplomatic immunity in Ashoor’s case.

The Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations prevents the police from entering the Embassy premises to question the diplomat or detain him. Sources said one of the options being considered is for the diplomat to be questioned by police via Skype.

However, many privately admitted that the Saudis could “withdraw” the diplomat. “Given the circumstances, it will be most sensible for the Saudis to quietly withdraw the diplomat,” Former Foreign Secretary Lalit Man Singh told The Indian Express.

Sources said that if the Saudis didn’t do so, the decision to expel Ashoor will be taken, under Article 9 of the Vienna Convention, as medical reports have corroborated the statements of the two Nepalese women that they had been raped.

The Saudi Embassy has termed the allegations as “false” and protested the alleged police “intrusion” into a diplomat’s house against “all diplomatic conventions”.

The two Nepalese women have alleged that they were confined and raped by the diplomat and his “guests” repeatedly in a flat in Gurgaon after which the local police filed an FIR.