NEW DELHI: India has appealed to Washington to show "utmost compassion" in the case of an Indian woman who was adopted and taken to the US in the 1980s but now faces deportation after being convicted of forgery.
The United States government has labelled 30-year-old Kairi Abha Shepherd, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, a "criminal alien" and says it plans to send her back to India.
Shepherd, an orphan, was adopted in India at the age of three months in 1982 by a single US woman, who adopted nearly a dozen children from across the world.
The Utah woman died of cancer when Shepherd was eight, after which she was cared for by guardians.
The US government launched deportation proceedings against Shepherd after she was convicted in 2004 of forgery to fuel a drug habit.
US authorities say there are no records of any moves by her guardians or her adoptive mother to complete paperwork needed for her to receive US citizenship.
India's foreign secretary, Ranjan Mathai, said on Friday that Shepherd's deportation was "a tragic humanitarian issue and should be treated by the US with utmost compassion," the Press Trust of India reported.
But US authorities say her deportation would be consistent with the US immigration department's focus on "deportation of aliens with felony criminal convictions."
Shepherd, who has no known relatives in India and has never visited since her adoption, is also suffering from auto-immune disorder multiple sclerosis, which can cause loss of movement and speech, her lawyers say.
After the deportation wrangle began, Shepherd's lawyers produced her adoption papers and documentation to show that she qualified for citizenship.
But US government prosecutors said she had missed qualifying for the Child Citizen Act by a few months and was now too old to apply for citizenship.
Shepherd has said that deportation to India would be like a "death sentence."
"She just fell between the cracks," Shepherd's lawyer Alan Smith told the Times of India newspaper.
"We want authorities to hold back deportation proceedings till we exhaust all legal avenues. Our biggest fear is that she might find it hard to survive in India with her multiple sclerosis condition," he said.
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