New Delhi: An Australian court Wednesday ordered former Indian highcommissioner to Canberra, Navdeep Suri, to pay a penalty of AU$ 97,200 to a domestic staff member who worked for him for 13 months in 2016-16.
The fine comes on top of a previous order that required a payment of AU$ 1,36,276.62 plus interest to Seema Shergill for work completed during that period.
According to local media reports, Suri paid his domestic worker, Shergill, about AU$ 3,400 between April 2015 and May 2016 – which is less than AU$10 a day.
Suri at the time of the original judgement in November had slammed the Australian court order, and told ThePrint it was “full of absurdities”.
In the latest judgement, Justice Elizabeth Raper said the “circumstances” of the case falls within the definition of “slave-like conditions”.
“They were in every sense egregious and exploitative in their effect of depriving Ms Shergill of any semblance of a work and life divide,” she said, as reported by ABC News.
The Indian foreign ministry in November rejected the original court order. The then MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, “We reject any locus standi of Australian authorities to adjudicate on matters concerning such India-based service staff of the High Commission.”
The ministry had called on Australia to repatriate the former staffer to India, making it clear that any grievance Shergill may have should be addressed in India.
Navdeep Suri had served as India’s envoy to Australia between April 2015 and November 2016. As reported by ThePrint, Seema Shergill had served as his domestic staff during his time in Egypt, a year before he was posted to Australia.
The foreign ministry said that Shergill deserted her post in May 2016, a day before she was to return to India. Her ticket was booked on 27 May, 2016 for a flight she never boarded.
Shergill is reported to have gained Australian citizenship in 2021. Proceedings against Suri by Australian authorities began a year after he retired in 2019.
In November, Arindam Bagchi had said Shergill’s “conduct and false representations” gave rise to suspicions that all this had been motivated by her desire to permanently stay in Australia, “and in which she seems to have succeeded”.
This is not the first time an Indian diplomat has been accused of underpaying their domestic staff.
In 2013, Devyani Khobragade, the then acting consul general of the Indian consulate in New York was arrested by American authorities after being accused of lying on a visa application for her domestic staff and underpaying the individual in question.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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