Opinion

A passage out of India

If India wishes to be treated as a first-rate power, maybe it should act like one.

This begins with the release of a New York City policeman it has arrested and detained in retaliation for the earlier arrest here of an Indian diplomat on charges she’d lied on visa forms about her maid’s pay.

The police officer is Manny Encarnacion, a former Marine who was in India to visit his wife. Encarnacion was nabbed in March at Indira Gandhi International Airport after three bullets were found in his jacket. He had put them there during a visit to an NYPD firing range and forgotten about them.

The Indian consulate in New York says the idea that the two arrests are related is “ridiculous.” But as The Post also reported, when Encarnacion was arrested, an Indian police officer at the airport told him, “You guys like to strip search.” It’s plainly a reference to the strip search of Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat who was arrested here back in December.

New York politicians of both parties have rightly made Encarnacion’s freedom a priority. Long Island Rep. Peter King told WINS: “This is the type of thing we used to associate with the Soviet Union or a third-world dictatorship, not what actually is the world’s largest democracy.” In a similar way, Charles Schumer told CBS that “what [India] did is childish.”

Almost as troubling as the Indians is the response from a State Department spokesman: “We’ve said we want to get past some of the tensions that have been there over the past several months and move on.”

Now, we wouldn’t want our government to take the outrageous steps India took when its diplomat was arrested — e.g., withdrawing security barricades at the US embassy. We are confident our government has many levers it can use to drive home to New Delhi that there will be a high price to pay if Encarnacion is not released.

In the meantime, no US official should be looking to “get past” tensions with India until this American police officer is back on his home soil.