Hit & Run, Kuwaiti embassy style

NEW DELHI, MARCH 11: Some employees of the Kuwaiti Embassy here on Wednesday allegedly manhandled, then threw out, a woman who had compla...

NEW DELHI, MARCH 11: Some employees of the Kuwaiti Embassy here on Wednesday allegedly manhandled, then threw out, a woman who had complained that a diplomat’s car had banged her vehicle and damaged the fender. Kuwaiti Embassy officials could not be contacted for comment despite several attempts.

Renu Kohli, who is an officer in the Reserve Bank of India and currently on deputation to the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, was driving on the Ring Road past Hyatt Regency in R K Puram, when then incident occurred.

She says, a car, with a diplomatic registration number (43-CD-33), tried to overtake her car. And the latter rammed her vehicle in the process. The fenders of both the cars got entangled, and a portion of the fender on Kohli’s car came off in the impact.

Both cars then screeched to a halt. Kohli retrieved the damaged portion of the fender from the road and asked the occupant of the other car to compensate her for the damage. But the man inside the car — which laterturned out to be from the Kuwaiti Embassy — drove away.

Kohli followed the other car till it entered the Kuwaiti Embassy at Chanakyapuri. She went in and demanded that “justice be done to her and that the offender compensate her”.

Instead, Kohli says, she was assaulted and manhandled inside the embassy before being thrown out. “We asked her to get a medical checkup done for a medico-legal case but she refused to do that,” said SHO (Chanakyapuri) Shukesh Singh.

He added: “Kohli had, perhaps, started shouting inside the embassy and lost her temper. The embassy staff may then have asked her to leave the premises.” The police have, nevertheless, registered an FIR in connection with manhandling and accident.

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The case is being transferred to the R K Puram Police Station as the accident took place in that area, though the alleged manhandling took place under the jurisdiction of the Chanakyapuri police.

“We discovered only at the end that the accident occurred in front of Hyatt Regency which is notour area,” the Chanakyapuri SHO said. “We will write to the Ministry of External Affairs.”