By Mata Press Service

The dowry had been settled. The party was set. The wedding was underway. That was until the uninvited guest Tejinder Kaur arrived with a bunch of cops and the media in tow to stop Gurbind Singh getting hitched in Mullanpur, Ludhiana. Tejinder told the crowd Gurbind was her husband, who had married her 10 years ago, took the dowry and then disappeared. The 44-year-old bridegroom lived with her for 10 days, she said, while hurling abuse at the man in front of hundreds of guests and the new bride at the Karan Wedding Palace outside Ludhiana. “Don’t marry my husband..he abandoned me,” she wailed while staging a sit-in at the wedding dias.

Hearing the claims, the new bride refused to marry Gurbind and fled despite pleas and threats from her family. Gurbind, who had arrived from England this month, was taken into police custody after a seven hour standoff which saw his relatives hurling stones at reporters. He spent what was supposed to be his honeymoon night in the Ludhiana police station telling cops he had divorced Tejinder and that he is legally able to marry again. Tejinder, from Shimla Puri colony, has filed a police report, telling another story.

Her story was reflective of the widespread social scandal in India dubbed the “abandoned brides/runaway grooms phenomenon”.

The issue was first reported in Canada by the Asian Pacific Post and later documented in an internationally acclaimed series by The Province newspaper. Official estimates say some 30,000 women in India have been left behind by their overseas-based husbands, referred to as Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). Fuelled by an obsession to go abroad, young Indian women, many of them from Punjab, are hastily married off to NRIs by their families, who hope their daughters will be the ticket to a new life overseas.

But the rogues attracted to this ready matrimonial market, leave with the dowries shortly after the wedding, never making good on their promises to return with immigration papers. The abandoned brides, many with kids, are left to lives of misery laced with the stigma of having been “used” while their familes are ruined by the financial burdens of having had to raise a dowry.

Over the last two years, since the international media attention, efforts are underway to stop this scourge.

The Indian government has moved to set up special cells overseas to check the background of potential bridegrooms while holding seminars to educate gullible village girls in India. Several organisations have also been formed, including one in B.C., to help the victims of this marital fraud. However, Indian media reports said cases of abandoned brides continue to grow. One fledgling group formed to help abandoned brides in Punjab has helped several women file cases against their overseas husbands. This, local media, said has emboldened women who have been duped in marital scams to come forward.