TNN

Washington, May 15: Republican or Democrat, it just does not matter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's daughter when it comes to her fight for human rights and civil liberties.

After giving President Bush and his administration a torrid time over its use of torture and abuse of detainees in the so-called war on terror, Amrit Singh, the prime minister's New York-based daughter who is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has now gotten after President Barack Obama.

Amrit Singh lit into Obama on Thursday after the US President reversed course and decided his administration would contest the court-ordered release of photographs of detainee abuse by US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.

Although she has kept a low media profile despite being one of ACLU's lead attorneys in the long-drawn case, Amrit Singh came out swinging in public on Thursday, appearing on several television channels to pillory the Obama administration for reneging on its word.

"The reversal is another indication of the continuance of the Bush administration's policies under the Obama administration. President Obama's promise of accountability is meaningless, (and) this is inconsistent with his promise of transparency. It violates the government's commitment to the court. People need to examine these abusive photographs, but also the government officials need to be held accountable," she told ABC News, which did not explicitly identify her Indian background.

Amrit's wrath comes just weeks after her father sought Obama's autograph (at the G20 summit in London) for (he said) his daughter. The request was presumed to be for Amrit Singh, although he has two other daughters who live in India. The most "political" of the three, Amrit is said to have had high hopes in the Democratic administration undoing the excesses of the Bush era.

Amrit, on behalf of ACLU, was locked in a protracted legal battle with the Bush administration even as her father's government was locked in what's regarded as the most intense strategic embrace with Washington in bilateral history. Her bitter scrap with the Bush White House was going on even as Prime Minister Singh told President Bush during their last meeting of the affection the people of India have for him.

"The people of India deeply love you, Mr President," an overwrought Singh told Bush during a White House meeting last September around the time the US-India nuclear deal was consummated.

But Amrit Singh didn't seem to have shared the same affection her father has for Bush. She joined her parents when they were on a state visit to Washington DC in July 2005 during the Bush Presidency but did not stay with them at Blair House, the state guest house where visiting dignities stay with their family.

When Obama was swept into office, expectations were high in the civil liberties community that he would overturn many of the Bush-era policies related to the so-called war on terror. When the new President initially ordered the release of the so-called torture memos, sparking an outrage among Republicans, Amrit Singh welcomed it, saying, "The Obama administration had a choice: whether it would cover up Bush administration crimes, thereby becoming complicit, or to hold true to the President's pledges of transparency and accountability."

The new President "has certainly delivered on transparency by releasing the memos. But transparency itself wasn't sufficient," she had cautioned, asking for high-ranking officials in the Bush administration to be held accountable for authorizing torture.

Instead, President Obama, seemingly under pressure from Republicans and the hard-line national security constituency, reversed course on Thursday. Although he had signed off on a Pentagon decision that agreed with a case filed by Singh on behalf of ACLU to release the torture photographs, the US President backed away from his promise, saying, "The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

"Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse," he added. Obama also said it was his belief that the "publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.