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Website and call centre to help solve crimes in Punjab
Like many in the Indo-Canadian community, Kuldip Singh’s father had left him a plot of ancestral farmland in the family’s village in Punjab.
Recently, the Surrey-based businessman decided to return to his homeland in the hope of selling the land, which had soared in value, and divide the proceeds with his siblings.
“I was shocked to see a bungalow on the land and the farm being used by a relative of my sister-in-law,” he said.
“I lodged a police report but I got arrested as police claimed that I was using forged papers to make the claim.”
After two nights in jail, Kuldip Singh managed to get bail. He left for the airport and returned home to Surrey.
He later found out that after he migrated to Canada, the family had entrusted the land to relatives of his sister-in-law. They forged legal documents granting themselves all types of powers over the property, including the right to sell. It wasn’t long before they sold off the family land for over $200,000.
Now, Kuldip Singh finds himself embroiled in a legal mess and tangled in arguments about forgery and proprietorship.
Like thousands of other Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), Kuldip is on a quest to reclaim what he believes is rightfully his. But being thousands of miles away, he has had to restrict his fight by sending letters to the land office and written complaints to the police.
He is not alone.
Every year, hundreds of land claims are filed by Non-Resident Indians with police departments throughout India. The complaints mostly from Canada, the UK, Australia and the U.S take years to be resolved. Experts speculate that there are thousands of open files throughout the state of Punjab, from which the majority of Canada’s South Asians originate.
In recent years, the price of property in Punjab has soared to dizzying new levels, providing new incentives for NRIs to reclaim their land.
Aging NRIs, in particular, are returning to their birthplace to reclaim their property, which has often quadrupled in worth in the past five to 10 years.
One such NRI in Ludhiana told IANS: "I didn’t come to India for more than 10 years and only recently realized my property is worth $6 million."
And NRIs are turning out to be easy marks. Punjab’s land wealth has invigorated the "land mafia" — a group of unscrupulous real estate agents who keep a close watch on the lands and properties of NRIs who hardly visit the state.
But falling victim to the "land mafia" is only part of the problem. Just as common are NRIs who come home to find that their property has been sold or developed by the very person they entrusted their ancestral lands to, as in Kuldip Singh’s case.
Now in an effort to help the Punjabi Diaspora around the world seek redress about disputes over property, theft and marriage, the Punjab State Government has decided to set-up a 24-7 call center to register their complaints on the phone or through a website and offer replies to the status of their complaint in a timely manner.
According to media in Punjab, the establishment of this call centre was decided at a recent high-level meeting presided over by Bikram Singh Majithia, Punjab’s Minister for NRI Affairs which was attended by the Chairman of the State NRI Commission Justice Arvind Kumar (Retd), Punjab Chief Secretary Rakesh Singh and other senior officers of the state.
Majithia said that Punjabi Diaspora has contributed a lot in the development of state and it ‘becomes our bounden duty to ensure that there was no harassment of NRIs in the state.’
Asking the NRI Commissioner to prepare a case to set-up round the clock call center to address the grievances of NRIs, Majithia said that besides call center the department would also come out with an interactive website. He said that since the time zones of various countries differ with India, it was imperative that call center worked 24 hours for the convenience of Punjabi diaspora.
Expressing concern over reported cases of harassment, cheating of NRIs, Majithia said that Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) and Superintendent of Police (Headquarters) would be ex-officio designated as Nodal Officers of NRI, who would be duty-bound to deliver justice to NRIs in a timely manner. He said that they would also submit detailed fortnightly statement of cases received and action taken to the state cabinet.
Majithia has also directed senior officers to participate in live talk shows especially on radio stations in Canada, USA, UK, European Countries and Australia to instill confidence in the NRIs and to convey the message of Punjab Government to them.
They would also attend to the complaints of NRIs in such talk shows.
This is not the first time the Punjab State Government and police have tried this method to help NRIs.
A few years ago, Punjab police participated in special talk shows where foreign Indian nationals could call in with their complaints. But this program fizzled out.
For Kuldip Singh, the new call-centre gives him an avenue to fight for his ancestral land.
But he does not hold out much hope.
“They need to do something concrete and show they can help…This is a step in the right direction and I hope it works.
While, land disputes are expected to dominate the new call centre, police are also bracing for increased criminal complaints about dowry harassment, abandoned brides and contract killings.
Indian police and legal experts tell the South Asian Post that there a worrying trend of contract killings is rising in Punjab because the culprits believe that India cannot extradite them.
In many of the cases, poorly paid Indian policemen play a role in the killings or help cover-up evidence after getting paid in overseas dollars.
In most cases, broken marriages, illicit affairs and property disputes are the main reasons why NRIs are ordering people killed.
The killings are carried out in Punjab and not in the adopted countries of these NRIs because of the lax laws in India.
The money involved in each contract killing, according to police officials, is anything between C$5,000 to C$125,000.
Over the last few years, there have been at least two dozen contract killings involving NRIs in Punjab.
Most of the cases occurred in Punjab’s Doaba belt — the land between the Sutlej and Beas rivers comprising the districts of Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Nawanshahr — where most of Canada’s South Asians hail from.
Meanwhile, Punjab police said they will continue to impound passports of NRI runaway bridegrooms to stop a social scourge that has left over 30,000 women desperate and looking for their husbands.
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.
The ministry estimates that hundreds of thousands of Indian 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.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada is also planning to tighten policies to prevent people from gaining permanent residency through marriage fraud.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada acknowledges roughly 1,000 such cases are reported annually. In 2009, nearly 45,000 people immigrated to Canada as spouses.
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