by Moiz Mannan
Just about a month ago, there was a news report from Ahmedabad narrating the human interest story of a 68-year-old US-based man whose matrimonial ad in a newspaper drew a staggering 51 applications.
Interesting, but certainly not funny. Obviously, it was the ‘NRI’ tag on the man that attracted the women, many of them in their twenties, and their parents to the elderly gentleman who was stunned by the response. The most disturbing part of the story, as reported, was that some of the applicants were even willing to live-in with the man and work for him.
Around the same time, there were reports from Hyderabad of a police case being registered against a US-based NRI in connection with domestic violence and dowry harassment against his wife. The woman’s father claimed that he had coughed up Rs1.5m in cash apart from considerable quantities of gold and silver, and yet the NRI son-in-law beat up and forcibly sent his daughter home asking for
more dowry.
So, even as we talk of women’s liberation and empowerment, cases such as this demonstrate certain harsh realities. It is no surprise, therefore, that the numbers of NRI marriages gone sour refuse to diminish.
The national capital, Delhi, has earned the dubious distinction of the highest number of cases in the country involving brides being abandoned by NRI men over the past four years. Out of the 984 complaints registered with the National Council for Women (NCW) regarding women being deserted by NRI husbands as many as 177 belonged to Delhi. Last year alone, the capital city witnessed 59 such complaints, followed by Uttar Pradesh 38, Andhra Pradesh 35, Haryana 29, Maharashtra 23 and Gujarat 19. Apparently, concerted efforts by the government and NGOs in Punjab have helped it get off the top spot in this unfortunate list. In 2012-13, the state was even behind Andhra Pradesh with 30 complaints of women being exploited by NRI husbands.
The Free Press Journal quoted NCW chairperson Mamata Sharma as giving credit to the Punjab government for dedicated work done to make the families understand that they should not run for the NRI without checking up their antecedents.
The Punjab Police has a separate department of the NRI Affairs to deal with such complaints. Dos and don’ts have been issued to help prospective brides. One such is the suggestion that the women report a marriage with an NRI to the passport office in Jalandhar, which can help them track down the man later in case he abandons his wife. Punjab, through the Registration of Marriages Act, is also the first state in the country to make registration of marriages of NRI and foreign nationals compulsory.
The situation remains dismal in the rest of the country, though. Once again, the high-level parliamentary committee on external affairs has rapped the government and its agencies for not doing enough.
According to a report submitted by the committee to the Lok Sabha earlier this week, NCW has disposed off only 30 of the 813 complaints that they received and the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has provided financial assistance to only 82 of the 377 women who were in distress abroad.
The report has directed government to take effective action and dedicate funds for the assistance of abandoned and deserted women caught in fraudulent marriages.
The panel has pulled up the ministry and the NCW over a series of initiatives that have been left on paper including ensuring registration of NRI marriages, signing of bilateral legal assistance agreements, relief and rehabilitation schemes for abandoned women through a single window mechanism and conducting awareness campaigns.
It criticised overseas the Overseas Indian Affairs Ministry for failing to put in place a mechanism to help the victims of fraudulent marriages and said a rehabilitation scheme should be launched to help the affected women.
It also strongly recommended that the passport authorities should be asked to play a proactive role in such cases and they should use their “discretion” under provisions of the law to impound and revoke passports of people if it was found that they do not respond to summons and cooperate with courts.
Legal experts offering advice through vakilno1.com explain that ‘NRI marriages’, as generally understood, are between an Indian woman from India and an Indian man residing in another country (thus NRI), either as Indian citizen (when he would legally be an ‘NRI’) or as citizen of that other country (when he would legally be a PIO — person of Indian origin). In case of things going wrong in an NRI marriage, the woman’s recourse to justice is greatly constrained and complex. The aggravated risk in such marriage is the woman is being ‘isolated’ far away from home in an alien land, facing language constraints, communication problems, lack of proper information about the local criminal justice, police and legal system.
The lawyers have called for a simplification of procedures, introduction of a system of consent wherein an NRI husband may not cancel sponsorship of his wife until she depends on him, domestic discord to be included in extradition treaties, expediting court proceedings and giving more powers to the NCW.
