The Indian consul General in New York, Prabhu Dayal, has dismissed as complete “mischievous” and “complete nonsense” charges by a former housekeeper that she was treated like a slave while working for him and his family.

Dayal while reacting to a forced-labor suit filed by Santosh Bharadwaj, 45, in a Manhattan federal court on Monday told IANS on phone from New York that these are mischievous and nonsense.

The housekeeper alleged that Dayal had promised to pay $10m for an hour, plus overtime, to cook and clean for him and his wife after he was appointed to his post in 2008. But after arriving in US, Dayal confiscated her passport and paid her only $300 a month to sleep in a storage closet and work 15 hours a day and seven days a week.

In her suit she claims unspecified damages and return of her passport.

She said she escaped last year when Dayal was out at a meeting and his wife was in her room with the door closed.

Dayal rejected Bharadwaj’s allegations stating it as baseless. He claimed that she was under his employment in New Delhi for one year, in Morocco for four years and in New York for eleven months.  Also added that she wanted to work part time outside as she wanted to earn more but this was not allowed as her passport was an official passport and her visa did not allow her to work  anywhere except in his home. Thereafter she absconded and after one and a half years filed a suit against him.

Dayal said that all the allegations filed in the suit against him were false and was baseless. Dayal also rejected as an “insinuation” charges that he has asked the housekeeper “for a massage, which she interpreted as a sexual advance”, saying he never asked for a massage.

INDIAN DIPLOMAT DENIES SLAVERY CHARGES

Report by Alaka