A quiet but stressful drama was played out at one of the five-star hotels in Delhi at the same time the city was agog with anticipation over whether India would be able to forge a consensus at the G20 summit, placing security agencies in a pickle.
It started when the unusual dimensions of the bags of one of the members of the Chinese delegation engaged the attention of security officers deployed at their hotel, Taj Palace. While the team had been instructed to facilitate passage of “diplomatic baggage”, the size of the bags was too odd to have evaded the attention of eyes trained to be wary. However, keeping diplomatic protocols in mind, the security personnel allowed the bags in.
Once inside the area, a staff member accidentally caught a glimpse of some "suspicious equipment" and quickly alerted the superiors, who, after a brief round of meetings, instructed the team to run the bags through the scanner. A tense confrontation ensued as the Chinese refused to allow the bags and, more importantly, their contents, to be searched. The security personnel were anyway intrigued on getting to know that the Chinese delegation had sought a separate and “private” internet connection, which the hotel declined.
Sources at the hotel said the 12-hour-long drama was resolved only after Chinese security agreed to remove the equipment from the hotel and have it sent to their embassy. Incidentally, the Brazilian president, the next host of the G20 summit, was also staying in the same hotel.