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 U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in Manhattan said Monirul Islam,
a former New York consul general of Bangladesh, and his wife Fahima
Tahsina Prova were not immune from the lawsuit by Mashud Parves
Rana, because their employment and supervision of him were not
"consular functions."
Rana sued for back pay and punitive damages last March, shortly
before Islam began a new job in Morocco as Bangladesh's ambassador
to that country.
The lawsuit was filed several days after Devyani Khobragade, once
India's deputy consul general in New York, won dismissal of a
federal indictment concerning her employment of another domestic
worker, in a case that frayed U.S.-India relations.
A lawyer for the defendants declined to comment on Tuesday's
decision, but said his clients will continue to vigorously defend
against the claims in the complaint.
 Rana, a Bangladesh citizen admitted to the United States on an A-3
visa, had accused the defendants of luring him to work for them in
New York by promising to pay him $3,000 a month and renew his visa.
Instead, he said he was never paid during his roughly 1-1/2 years of
employment, and was forced to work 16- to 20-hour days through
"physical threats, coercion, isolation (and) physical restraint,"
with threats to his life if he tried to escape.
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"The record on this motion shows that Rana was employed to meet
defendants' private needs," Stein wrote. "That Rana occasionally
cooked food for events at the Bangladesh Consulate and provided
services at monthly community events there is not sufficient to
render his employment a consular function."
Emily Shea, a lawyer at the Dechert law firm representing Rana,
welcomed the decision.
"Mr. Rana was enslaved by the defendants for over a year," she said
in a telephone interview. "This ruling brings him one step closer to
getting what he is owed."
The Bangladesh Consulate General was not named as a defendant. It
did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is Rana v. Islam et al, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York, No. 14-01993.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York. Editing by Andre Grenon)
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