Vijay Kumar leaving for India

Washington: Vijay Kumar, Indian filmmaker arrested in the United States and jailed for 20 days for carrying brass knuckles and “jihadi literature” in his baggage, will be leaving for India, his lawyer has confirmed.
Speaking to The Hindu on Sunday evening, attorney Grant Scheiner said he had “learned that Mr. Vijay Kumar is scheduled to leave Houston within the next 24 hours.”
He further said the filmmaker “should arrive in New Delhi in approximately one week's time,” as he had two stops to make before returning to India.
There were “people watching the process, to make certain that Mr. Kumar leaves Houston safely.”
Although the arrest was a “mistake of law,” Mr. Kumar was unable to obtain an earlier acquittal because he was “tied into a procedural knot by U.S. law,” Mr. Scheiner said. Particularly baffling — and an indicator of excessive caution in the post-9/11 era — was the fact that Mr. Kumar had his visa revoked by immigration authorities and then was jailed for not having a valid U.S. visa.
While there was no doubt that Mr. Kumar had contravened a Texas law forbidding persons from carrying brass knuckles at airports, he was simply following federal law, his attorney earlier said, which was anyway not consistent with the State law.
14/09/10 Narayan Lakshman/The Hindu

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Categories: airports Sep 2010, Foreign Sep 2010