Indo-Canadian businessman Pawan Dass was on a trip in India when he met his wife-to-be Richa in Delhi.
They got married on December 11, 2003 and he flew back to Canada two weeks after the wedding and honeymoon, promising he would send her the immigration papers.
It never happened; and subsequently when she confronted him about his ongoing relationship with his first wife, he abused her and also blocked her access to the cash that was being deposited in her bank account.
Unable to bear the shame of being abandoned, Richa hung herself at her home in Delhi on April 4, 2004.
In her suicide note, Richa alleged that Pawan used to call her a whore and said he was not interested in continuing their relationship.
Last week, a Delhi court directed the Canadian Non-Resident Indian to perform community service in the city’s School for Blind for six months.The court acquitted him for abetting her suicide after police arrested him on a another visit to India.
Additional sessions judge Kamini Lau said, “The husband inflicts mental cruelty and harassment to his wife by abandoning her at paternal house. Depriving her of cohabitation and his company, which leads to death of the wife on account of suicide, there is no reason why he cannot be, convicted for section 498 A (Domestic Violence Act).”
Pawan Dass was originally tried for abetting Richa’s suicide, but the court noted that he could not have been legally punished for doing immediate acts to goad her to take the extreme step because of the lack of proximity between them.
Judge Kamini Lau noted that while a court faced a legal handicap in charging the accused husbands under other provisions of the Indian Penal Code, they can certainly be hauled up for committing cruelty to the women.
“Of late, a large number of cases have come to light where Non Resident Indians have been exploiting young qualified Indian women in the name of marriage. Single women, particularly a divorcee, are easy prey and often with a hope to get away from the existing anxieties and pressures of day to day life, become victims to these NRI men,” said the judge.
The cruelty conviction is expected to set the tone for an increased actions by Indian authorities to go after foreign men who marry and later abandoned Indian women to life of shame and poverty.
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.
In the Punjab city of Jalandhar, where a crackdown has begun in the 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.
In just the last two months, the Jalandhar regional passport office (RPO) has confiscated the passports of 48 men who married, allegedly got dowry, dumped their wives and attempted to flee the country.
The RPO, which functions under the Ministry of External Afairs, also initiated a women’s grievance cell in February.
“We have established a ‘women’s grievance cell’ to hear complaints from women who have been duped by their NRI husbands. So far, we have confiscated 48 passports of errant husbands by invoking a legal provision of the Passport Act, 1967,” Parneet Singh, the passport officer of the Jalandhar RPO, told IANS.
The complainant has to submit the marriage certificate, copy of the First Information Report (FIR) filed with the police and documents detailing husband’s name, date of birth and address.
“Over 100 complaints are still under our scrutiny and we would soon take appropriate action,” the official said.
Once the complaint is received, he said, a show cause notice is issued. If there is no response to the notice, the passport is confiscated when the NRI shows it at the airport.
“Then he cannot leave the country until the matter is resolved, either legally or through mutual consent,” he added.
“However, if he manages to flee, then we inform the Indian embassy in that country and he would be immediately deported to India, depending on the merits of the case,” Parneet Singh said.
According to the passport office officials, Section 10 (3) of the Passport Act says the issuing authority can impound the passport in the public interest after giving a show cause notice.
The Jalandhar RPO caters to Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr and Kapurthala districts.
Its officials have also directed district marriage officers to provide details about marriages involving NRI grooms so that their wives’ names can be added to the passports.
The initiative has encouraged women to come out and voice their grievances.
Kirpal Kaur, a victim from Jalandhar, told IANS: “A Canada-based man deceived me last year. He married me and took me to various places in India and disappeared with my cash and jewelery. Now I am also planning to approach the RPO against him.”
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.