Expressing deep anguish over the detention of software company i-flex's London based CEO and other employees in London and the Netherlands, Nasscom on Saturday urged the Dutch government for an early resolution of the case.

In a letter to the Dutch Ambassador to India, Nasscom president Kiran Karnik sought his intervention on the issue for immediate redressal.

It was a common practice for IT product companies like i-flex to send their employees to sort out customer problems using a business visa and not a work permit, it said. If authorities felt the i-flex staff were on incorrect visas, it could have been taken up in a "more professional and less peremptory manner", the letter said.

These companies were different from IT service companies whose employees work for extended period in customer premises, writing programmes or providing software support services, Nasscom said.

Describing such action as unacceptable, he said if there was a view that the employees of the company in question had
incorrect visas, it was arguable and at worst a technicality.     

"It is a serious breach of the unwritten but well understood norms of how corporates and professionals are treated and how international business is done in all reasonable, democratic countries", he said.

Referring to the CEO's sudden detention without formal charges, he said it was a violation of the dignity and self-
respect of an individual and felt that a simple request to the company would have been a more professional and civilised
way of handling the issue.