New Delhi, Sept. 15 :     The Indian embassy?s protestations of his innocence notwithstanding, the young diplomat who is now at the centre of a sex-cum-slave scandal in Paris is to be quietly recalled from his post. Sources in the ministry of external affairs said the precedent in all similar cases was the premature transfer of such officers, irrespective of whether they were prima facie guilty or otherwise. This is based on the assumption that even if a diplomat is innocent, his effectiveness in the post will be considerably reduced as a result of the scandal. The last major scandal involving an Indian diplomat centred around an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer who has married into the family of West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu and was posted in Switzerland over a year ago. He was hastily moved to the Indian consulate in Birmingham after he was alleged to have ill-treated his maid while he was posted in Geneva. Curiously, the allegations against Emanuel Barua, the diplomat in question, were also made by the Committee Against Modern Day Slavery, the organisation which has now accused the Paris-based IFS officer of sexually abusing and mutilating his maid, Lalita Oraon. The non-governmental organisation is known in Europe by its French acronym, CCEM. It is the campaign by the CCEM against Barua and, now, against Amrit Lugun, a first secretary at the Indian embassy in Paris, which has persuaded the Indian government that Lugun is the victim of a frame-up by the NGO. For the record, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday that South Block was in touch with its embassy in Paris and facts were being ascertained. But sources at the Indian embassy in Paris said many Third World ambassadors to France, in private conversations with the Indian envoy there, had expressed support for the embassy?s vociferous defence of Lugun. These envoys told the Indian ambassador that their own diplomats had been targeted periodically by CCEM with similar allegations. The Indian embassy?s version of events in the Oraon case is totally at variance with story put out by AFP, the French news agency, on Tuesday. Oraon, said sources at the embassy, arrived in Paris in January to work for the Lugun family, made up of the diplomat, his wife and two small children. The Luguns were unhappy with the maid?s work, especially the way she looked after the children and decided to send her back to India in the first week of September. However, Oraon learned about these plans and ran away from the Lugun household on September 5, when she was found by the police and subsequently handed over to the CCEM?s care. The Indian embassy maintains that even after the French authorities confiscated Oraon?s official passport, they had agreed to produce her at Paris airport for repatriation to India. The embassy has cited this as proof Oraon?s fitness to travel to India until she was handed over to the NGO. They also said Oraon tried to kill herself, breaking her ankle and a vertebra in the process, while in CCEM?s custody. The embassy?s case has been strengthened by the fact that though Oraon has been in police custody for 10 days, the Paris prosecutor?s office did not initiate any legal action. It did not even make a representation to the French foreign ministry asking for a withdrawal of the envoy?s immunity. Embassy sources hinted that Bernard Debre, the urologist who operated on Oraon, was a CCEM activist, notwithstanding the fact that he was on Jacques Chirac?s panel of doctors. Responding to the embassy?s rejection of Debre?s findings, the Paris prosecutor?s office appointed two experts ? one a gynaecologist ? to examine Oraon and determine the precise date of her injuries.