Many Indian Brides Are Facing Abandonment by Their Non-resident Indian Husbands

The India government has launched a scheme to help women who are married and then abandoned by their husbands who live in the West. The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs said that women who are either divorced or abandoned within two years of their marriage will be entitled to legal and financial aid.
According to one recent estimate, at least 20,000 women have faced the trauma of abandonment by their non-resident Indian (NRI) husbands. In such situations, husbands mostly disappear soon after the wedding once they have received their wife's dowry payment.

According to an official in the ministry, SS Rana, informed the BBC that women who required help could approach Indian missions abroad directly or through a non-governmental organization that was approved by them. He said that: "Deserted women will be given financial assistance of $1,000 for seeking legal help and will also be offered counseling". To begin with, this help will be available for women who have been married for two years or less.

Mr Rana stated: "If we get a large number of such cases where women are abandoned after the two-year deadline, we will review the time limit". Officials have revealed that most cases involving abandonment are reported in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. These are countries where there is a substantial Indian migrant population.

The report goes on to say that the majority of women come from the the Indian states of Punjab, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. These states send a lot of migrants to the West as brides. The deputy secretary in the National Commission for Women, Gurpreet Deo, said that complaints had also been filed after marriages had taken place and the women had moved abroad to be with their husbands, only to find out that the men they thought were their husbands were actually already married.

Then there is the case of the "holiday (vacation) brides". Ms Deo said: "In these cases, NRIs come to India for a holiday, get married, pocket the dowry, and then disappear without leaving a trace". The women not only have to deal with the financial burden of their abandonment, but are left with emotional scars and possibly even a pregnancy to cope with on their own too.

However, because of the social stigma involved, these women are unable to remarry. Many parents seek a husband of Indian origin for their daughters from the US, UK, or Canada because they are considered a "good catch". Families often believe that by matching their daughters with Green Card holders in the US or with men who possess indefinite residence rights in the UK or Canada, they are setting them up for a life of comfort and ease. Ms Deo went on to say that the reason why NRIs were able to successfully get away with their crimes was because: "In their greed to send their daughters abroad, most parents don't do enough verification. There is very little awareness about these problems". This means that once a wife is abandoned, there is often very little that she can do. It is often easy for husbands to disappear because they can easily return to their country of residence and there is then no legal way to make them return to India. The police are reluctant to intervene in these cases. Even if they do file a case and the court issues a summons, there is no real way of delivering the summons on foreign territory. The most the court can do is to confiscate property, but not all NRIs have property in India to confiscate. The National Commission for Women is demanding tougher laws to help enforce the rights of abandoned wives. They have also asked the Indian government to sign extradition treaties with foreign countries so that the runaway grooms can be brought back to India and tried for their crimes in an Indian court of law. However, at present, domestic violence and abandonment are not extraditable crimes and that is something that Ms Deo wants to see addressed in the near future.

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6389365.stm