NEW DELHI, (AFP) — India launched a series of reprisals against US officials yesterday, foreign ministry sources said, as outrage grows over a diplomat’s arrest in New York that New Delhi has branded “humiliating”.

In an escalating row, the Indian government ordered a range of measures including recalling identity cards for US consular officials that speed up travel into and through India, the sources said.

“We have ordered the withdrawal of all ID cards that are issued by the Ministry of External Affairs to the officials at the US consulates across India,” a senior ministry source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The government will also stop all import clearances for the US embassy including for alcohol, the sources said, while Indian security forces removed barricades outside the US embassy in New Delhi.

Tow trucks and mechanical diggers were seen taking away the heavy barriers which control traffic on the streets around the embassy.

The moves come after India’s deputy consul general in the US, Devyani Khobragade, was arrested in New York last week while dropping her children off at school.

Khobragade was arrested for allegedly underpaying her domestic helper, who is also an Indian national, and for lying on the helper’s visa application form.

Anger over the incident has been mounting in the Indian press, with front-page reports yesterday claiming Khobragade had been handcuffed and “strip-searched and confined with drug addicts.”

Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid said the government had taken measures to address the arrest, calling Khobragade’s seizure “completely unacceptable”.

“We have put in motion what we believe would be effective ways of addressing the issue but also in motion such steps that need to be taken to protect her dignity,” Khurshid told reporters in New Delhi.

Late yesterday US State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said the United States is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the arrest “to ensure that all appropriate procedures were followed and every opportunity for courtesy was extended.

“The United States and India enjoy a broad and deep friendship, and this isolated episode is not indicative of the close and mutually respectful ties we share,” she said in a statement.

India last Friday summoned the US ambassador to protest against the arrest, and a foreign ministry official said at the time that India was “shocked and appalled” at the handling of the incident.

The arrest touches a number of hot buttons in India, where fear of public humiliation, particularly among the middle and upper classes, resonates deeply, and pay and conditions for servants is kept mostly private.

The case is also the latest involving alleged mistreatment of domestic workers by wealthy Indian families. Many are poorly paid in India and rights groups regularly report cases of beating and other abuse.

Harf said on Monday that diplomatic security staff “followed standard procedures” during the arrest before Khobragade was handed over to US Marshals.

Harf also said Khobragade does not have full diplomatic immunity.

She only has immunity from prosecution with respect to duties performed as a consular official, under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

The diplomat’s father urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene in the case and ensure his daughter’s safe return to India.

“I am concerned with the safety and dignity of my daughter. I want my daughter back safe in India,” Uttam Khobragade told TV stations.

India’s national security adviser called the diplomat’s treatment “barbaric”, while a string of senior politicians from both major parties snubbed a visiting US Congressional delegation over the issue.

Opposition candidate for prime minister, Narendra Modi, said in a tweet that he had “refused” to meet the US delegation over the arrest.

The speaker of the lower house of parliament also called off a meeting with the US visitors, her office said.