Jayanti Dharma Teja, the founder of Jayanti Shipping Company in 1961 took loans from Indian banks to buy ships in the sixties. He was said to have used his closeness to Nehru to obtain the credit despite objections from the Ministry of shipping officials. The company went bankrupt and Teja was accused of fraud and declared as defaulter of loan repayment as well as tax compliance. He fled to New York. The government of India pursued extradition and at their request Teja was arrested but released on bail of 10,000 dollars. He jumped bail and flew down to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica in September 1967. He applied for permanent residency and citizenship there. The Costa Rican government went out of its way with generosity and gave him a diplomatic passport. This was thanks to his acquaintance with President Jose Figueras, known as Don Pepe. Teja had reportedly obtained a commission to help the Costa Rican Government in developing power plants and building up its own fleet of banana ships. The Indian authorities did their best to hound him out of his haven by carrying the extradition proceedings right up to the Costa Rican Supreme Court. But Figueras arranged elaborate legal defence. Antonio Picado, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, defended him against a battery of counsels brought in by the Indian Government from the US. Teja finally won the case, and President Fernando Tregos, who had come into power in the wake of Figueras's electoral defeat, upheld the decision of the Costa Rican court.
During his trip to UK in July1970 Teja was arrested at Heathrow airport by Scotland Yard acting on behalf of India’s red alert notice through Interpol. Teja claimed diplomatic immunity from arrest on the ground that he was on a diplomatic mission for the government of Costa Rica. The Costa Rican ambassador in London tried his best to release Teja. But this was rejected by the court in UK and he was extradited to India in 1971. He was convicted and jailed. After the release, he went back to live in Geneva.
The other Indian who got a diplomatic passport from a Latin American country was MN Roy. He spent two years in Mexico from 1917 to 1919. He was very active in the Mexican leftist politics besides writing articles and books. He was a founder of the Communist Party of Mexico. Later when he came back to India he founded the Communist party of India. The Mexican government had given him a diplomat passport with the false name of Roberto Vila Garcia to avoid the British and American harassment due to his communist activities. He had used this passport to visit Moscow for one of the Comintern conferences. Roy called Mexico as 'the land of his rebirth'. Today, the house where he stayed in Mexico city has been converted into a vibrant bar/night club with the name MN Roy
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