The state police records an average of 80 cases every year of NRI husbands harassing their wives. In fact, as many as 30 such cases have been booked in the first four months of 2010. According to CID officials who deal with cases registered against NRIs, a majority of the accused are white collar professionals including software engineers, doctors and management sector employees. According to CID IG S Umapati, about 90 percent of the accused are from US, followed by UK and Canada. The majority of the cases registered against the NRI husbands have been under section 498-A (subjecting married woman to cruelty). The other sections include, 420 (cheating ) and dowry prohibition act. In the year 2009, a total of 87 cases were registered against NRI husbands in state, 34 non-bailable warrants, three look out circulars and four red corner notices were issued. About 90 percent of these cases have been registered in the city. According to the IG, who is also an interpol liaisoning officer in the state, issuance of red corner notices had a positive effect on solving the dowry harassment cases involving an NRI husband, as most of them had been forced to come to India to face a trial. Two years ago, Interpol stopped issuing red corner notices against accused in dowry harassment cases (section 498-A of the IPC).Prior to this decision by interpol, 19 such notices were issued in 2007.
However, even after the issuance was stopped,police are trying to bring the NRI husbands to book by trying to attach their property under section 82 (proclamation for person absconding ) and section 83 (attachment of a property of a person absconding ) of CrPC. We are also trying to extradite the accused as per section 105-B of the CrPC, the IG said, adding that most of the victims return to their homeland to lodge a complaint as the marriage had taken place here and also because the concept of dowry does not exist in western societies.To prevent such tragedies,the IG said that people should do some basic background checks about the NRI bridegroom before marrying off their girls. Talk to the manager of the firm where the boy is working and also to at least two of his close friends. Send some of your people who stay in that country to verify the details. Take his passport and Visa number and be a lot more careful if he wants to marry very quickly, the IG suggests.
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Legally divorced abroad yet married in India
After three years of banging doors at each other, it was time for Prakash to end his marriage, or so he thought. Stationed at Chicago on a work permit, Prakash realised just how hassle free ending his marriage would be in a foreign court where all he had to do was cite irretrievable breakdown of marriage, a clause only being considered to be introduced in the Hindu Marriage Act. So while Prakash got the divorce decree, his shocked wife decided she wouldnt take away the Mrs from her name so easily. So, she came back home to Hyderabad and moved the local family court seeking that the Chicago court verdict be declared null and void. And she succeeded by virtue of the fact that foreign divorces are not considered valid in India unless the grounds and proceedings are in compliance with the Indian law. Also the verdict needs to be validated in India. However it is not a tangible victory. For, while the wife got her Mrs tag back, Prakash continues to live in Chicago as a single, divorced male. In legal speak, his marital status swings between married and separated, but socially he is back in the groom market looking at giving life a second chance.
Hundreds of nautical miles from Chicago, another Indian couple settled in Singapore decided to call it quits just that the wife was not quite ready, like in the Chicago case. Unwilling to accept the verdict, the wife came to India to get her divorce declared null and void. With a judgment in her favour now, declaring them to be still married, she is currently awaiting the execution of the court order. If both husband and wife agree for a divorce even in foreign land, they can get it by dissolving the marriage under the provisions of the concerned marriage act. But in cases where one of the partners does not want a divorce, a petition seeking to get it declared null and void can be filed here, said Anita Jain, family court advocate.
And this has resulted in creating a rare marital status: legally divorced abroad but married in India. Lawyers say that when individuals get married in India as per any Indian form of marriage, then the dissolution of the same should also happen through the Indian family court which has jurisdiction over the place where the marriage was solemnised. It could also be resolved in the family court which has jurisdiction over where they last stayed together. Thus, it becomes possible for couples to seek separation even when they are abroad, just that it takes a wrong direction when one of them does not consent to the separation.
But even a reversed separation decree has failed to yield much for the disgruntled women in both the mentioned cases. In case of the Singapore couple, for instance, the husband though still married to his wife as ruled by the local family court in Hyderabad, has gone ahead and tied the knot again. So whatever happens to the Mrs after she wins this court battle The woman with a nullified foreign divorce decree in hand can claim a share in the husbands property and also slap charges of dowry harassment and similar sections on the man, one reason why women continue to demand that divorces be declared null and void. It has happened in a few cases. The woman has refused to drop her married tag to be able to claim her husbands property and also ensure that he cannot visit India with pending cases against his name, says Anita Jain.
In another case, however, the aggrieved wife who got the divorce declared null and void at the Secunderabad court is now trying that the orders be served to her husband in the US. She is also trying for bigamy charges to be pressed against her husband. Not only is the process long drawn, it is almost impractical to assume that a local court summons would be binding on a person settled or working abroad.
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(source-toi)
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