New York:

Washington on Wednesday stressed that India encourages a fair, transparent and timely legal process and “we do not believe that anyone should object at this point” .

“We will continue to closely monitor these actions, including the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Miller was responding to questions at a State Department briefing about India’s summons of acting deputy chief of mission Gloria Berbena in New Delhi earlier in the day and the freezing of the Congress party’s bank accounts.

“We are also aware that the Congress party has alleged that the tax authorities have frozen some of their bank accounts, which will make it challenging for them to campaign effectively in the upcoming elections. We encourage fair, transparent and timely legal process on each of these issues .

“Regarding your first question, I’m not going to talk about any private diplomatic conversations, but certainly, what we say publicly is what I just said here, that we encourage a fair, transparent, timely legal process. We” I think No one should object to this. We will clarify the same privately,” Miller said.

Foreign Ministry officials summoned Gloria Berbena, the acting deputy head of the mission, at her office in south Delhi and lodged strong protests against remarks made by US State Department officials regarding Kejriwal’s arrest.

The meeting lasted more than 30 minutes.

According to reports, a US State Department official said that Washington “encourages Chief Minister Kejriwal to pursue fair, transparent and timely legal procedures.”

The Enforcement Directorate arrested Mr Kejriwal in a money laundering case related to the GST policy “scam”.

The case relates to alleged corruption and money laundering by the Delhi government in formulating and implementing the GST policy for 2021-22, which was later repealed.

Earlier, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Delhi expressed strong objection to the remarks made by the US State Department spokesperson regarding certain legal proceedings in India.

“Diplomatically, countries should respect the sovereignty and internal affairs of other countries. This responsibility is even more true for other democracies. Otherwise, it may end up setting an unhealthy precedent,” the ministry said.

“The legal process in India is based on an independent judiciary and is committed to objective and timely results. The defamation of this is baseless,” the MEA said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)