JOIN USFormer French diplomat Pascal Mazurier, who has been charged with raping his three-year-old daughter, on Monday said authorities in Bangalore had ill-treated him when he was arrested last year.
Briefing reporters, Pascal compared Devyani’s condition to his own. “When India was standing up to support Indian diplomat Devyani in the US, I want to remind you that the ordeal and ill-treatment I faced are comparable to the humiliation she is facing.” he claimed.
Diplomatic immunity
Further, he opined that like Devyani, he too was protected under the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs, 1963. “Like Devyani, I too enjoy diplomatic status... I'm turning 40 and I have children who are protected by the United Nations Convention on Rights of Child, 1989. The same articles/sections that apply to Devyani also apply to me,” he averred.
Pascal was arrested in June last year, when his wife Suja Jones filed a police complaint alleging that he had raped his minor daughter. Subsequently, he secured bail from the Karnataka High Court in October the same year.
The matter reached the office of the French President when media reports surfaced that Pascal was trying to secure their intervention. Legal representatives of the French office later clarified that they would side with neither of the parties in the matter.