NRI husbands scoot,  file for divorce from safe distance

BENGALURU:Non Resident Indians (NRIs) abandoning their wives in India soon after marriage is a practice that seems to be catching on, especially among couples in cities. Though the data of such cases has not been officially documented,there has been a number of cases where the husbands land themselves a job in offshore countries, cut all communication with the women and eventually file for a divorce without letting the wife have any say in it.

In Bengaluru, one such case is that of 30-year-old Sabiha's.

She found her husband on a matrimonial website and got married in 2013. After marriage, her mother-in-law kept her jewellery and the husband made demands for more dowry. She says, he abused her physically and emotionally too, while they were living together. Sahiba even survived a miscarriage. In 2017, the husband landed a job in Wipro in

Australia, and promised that he would be back in a few months.

Sahiba recalls:"Once he went there, he started talking less to me. After he got his first salary, he sent one month's rent and was not happy about it. We had a fight about this. After that, he stopped communicating with me. He blocked me on Facebook and every other platform. I thought that maybe he was angry, that he would eventually reach out. But, few days back, my parents met his parents and his family did not want to resolve the issue."

On October 12, 2017, Sabiha was informed via email that she had been given talaq on June 30. "But we were talking to each other till August and he gave me no indication of this," she says, adding that he gave her talaq and three months of 'iddat' (waiting time) till October, and he had decided all of this on his own.

Apart from incidents like that of Sabiha's, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has received cases where women have been duped of money after being promised marriage, or harassed by forcefully retaining the children's custody.

*No legal recourse available*

37-year old Seema (name changed) from the city was married for eight years and is now fighting a similar case. Her husband applied for a Canada's permanent resident (PR) visa, got it and went to the country by himself, promising to call her once he settles down. She waited for one and a half years, only to receive a divorce notice and a demand for custody of their only daughter.

Advocate Mohammed Shakeeb says, "There is no legal process to make NRIs come before Indian courts, and they are using this to abandon their wives, hoping to frustrate them into submission. Wives resist this and try every legal recourse, but it gives them no results. Even adverse orders against the husbands are not executed." He adds that many years ago there were cases of husbands from Punjab settling abroad with a new family, abandoning their first family in India.

There are instances were husbands return to the country when the entire divorce proceeding is complete. Shakeeb says, "The husband was away in Dubai for seven years, while his wife was waiting for him in Bengaluru. He filed for divorce and only came back after the divorce was granted".

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State steps in, serves summons via website

The government has been receiving complaints of fraud, abandonment, domestic violence, and being duped of money and jewellery in the name of dowry from women. Once such complaints are received by the government, as Shakeeb puts it, "It no longer becomes a personal affair anymore. It becomes a matter between the state and the individual."

Presently the laws are not stringent and there are no provisions to extradite such individuals. However, in light of the rising number of such cases, the Ministry of Law and Justice has proposed that summons to the NRI men who abandon their wives in India be served via their website and these summons uploaded on the MEA website will be treated as served to husbands. And in a first such crackdown by the government, passports of five NRIs who have abandoned their wives shortly after marriage, have been seized.

Instant triple talaq continues to be practised

Many husbands try to cut short talaq proceedings through novel ways, even by sending emails or text messages.The Supreme Court has ruled against instant triple talaq, which validated divorce notices on Whatsapp, phone calls, e-mails and so on. However, the recurrence of such cases show that wives continue to be plagued by the threat of being abandoned unexpectedly. Advocate Mohhamed Shakeeb says, "The triple talaaq judgement is a cosmetic relief injuncting Musli