In a concerted effort to stop a social scourge that has left over 30,000 women desperate and looking for their husbands, a government team in the town of Jalandhar, Punjab has begun impounding the passports of the so-called Non-Resident Indian (NRI) runaway bridegrooms.
The Jalandhar Passport Office’s Women’s Grievance Section (WGS) has hit the ground running, impounding passports of 11 NRI men who deserted their brides soon after marriage and returned to foreign shores, local media said.
The WGS, which was set up last month, has also issued show-cause notices to 40 other NRI grooms, 19 of whom are proclaimed offenders.
An official said that within a month of setting up the WGS, they had received 500 calls from UK, USA, Canada, Europe, China, Australia etc. Also, 200 people had visited the passport office to complain. Jalandhar had the maximum cases against NRI grooms, followed by Hoshiarpur. India’s abandoned brides are victims of cultural fraud which is perpetuated by greed and fuelled by a manic desire to go overseas.
Lured by the promise of large dowries, prospective grooms frequently breeze in every year from the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe marry, then rush back home with the spoils, leaving behind what have become known as “abandoned brides”.
Today, across India, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 young women live to regret marriages that have left them alone, miserable and consumed with shame.
According to Balwant Singh Ramoowalia of the the Lok Bhalai party, a small political organisation in Punjab, over 22,000 abandoned brides have registered criminal cases against their NRI (Non-Resident Indian) grooms in Punjab alone.
The South Asian Post and its sister papers were among the first newspapers in Canada to highlight and investigate this social menace five years ago.
A 2007 report by the Punjab University stated that about 25,000 abandoned women in Punjab alone faced an uphill battle against a legal system which provides little hope of justice.
It suggested the Indian government should stamp the marital status of NRIs in their passports and bring in new laws to protect vulnerable women.
With an estimated 30,000 brides being abandoned every year, usually by husbands living overseas, India’s Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs also recommends that families hire private detectives to vet suitors and avoid being conned into giving away dowries, which are officially outlawed but are still common among the wealthy.
The ministry estimates that hundreds of thousands of brides are lied to or misled each year.
While arranged marriages between Indo-Canadians and Indian nationals have a time-honoured and successful history, police in the state of Punjab, from which 75 per cent of B.C.’s Indo-Canadian population originates, say half of these marriages today are frauds.
Jalandhar, where the crackdown has begun is in Punjab’s Doaba region where this phenomenon–some have likened to organized crime – occurs at an alarming rate. Of the nearly 30,000 women deserted by NRI husbands and roughly 15,000 of them belong to the Doaba region.
Jalandhar Passport officer Parneet Singh told reporters that the passports of those grooms were impounded who did not respond to the show-cause notices sent to them within 15 days. He said a “Women’s Adalat” would be organised on International Women’s Day (March 8) to take up cases of desertion and facilitate spot issuance of passports.
In one case, an NRI man’s passport was impounded even before the show-cause notice was issued because he was set to fly abroad when the complaint against him was received. Complainant Parveen Bhatti, talking to The Indian Express, revealed that her husband Pradeep Singh had deserted her just after her marriage in 2008 and he was about to fly abroad after showing himself as unmarried, but she made a complaint to the passport officer, who acted immediately and impounded Pradeep’s passport just a few hours before the flight on February 22.
Saravjit Kaur, who married UK-based Gurpreet Singh Bal in 2002, was deserted in 2003. “He got married twice but couldn’t escape from the passport office net,” she said. Similarly, the passport of US-based Vishal Sharma has been impounded for deserting his wife Nandini Sharma of Amritsar.
The men whose passports are impounded will have to settle their matrimonial disputes for restoration of their passports.
Passport Officer Parneet Singh said that all the cases in which passports were impounded involved matrimonial fraud. Singh said 105 cases have been taken up so far while details of the other cases are being collected. “The police should have informed the passport office about the 19 POs but that did not happen,” he said.
He said he had discussed with the commissioner of Jalandhar division mandating inclusion of the spouse’s name in a passport at the time of registering a marriage. The Commissioner had further instructed the DC offices to initiate this procedure, he said.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs is also looking to issue dual passport to NRI brides to secure their safe passage back home in case they are abused and harassed by their husbands overseas.
“The National Commission of Women is preparing a report on NRI cases and I am going to request the External Affairs Ministry to issue the passports to women getting married to NRIs,” said Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath
She said the woman “can take one passport with her and depending on the ministry’s stand, the other can be kept in the possession of her family back home or the Indian embassy abroad”.
She also said that registering such marriages at religious places like gurdwara and temples was essential to keep records of such marriages.
“Once the girl is married and sent abroad, we have no control over how to protect her if she is victimised,” she said.
She also said the Indian embassy abroad should also register such marriages.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada is also planning to tighten policies to prevent people from gaining permanent residency through marriage fraud.
Immigration minister Jason Kenney is consulting with different groups and looking at how the law might be structured to deal with this kind of a situation.