As if dowry deaths, gender-influenced abortions and other social ills didn’t make me ill enough, now I can read about NRIs who return to India and marry purely for fiscal reasons, with the intent to abandon their naive new brides;
Baljeet Kaur gave her life savings and a scooter as dowry to marry Harvinder Singh in 1986 with the promise she would leave Punjab and join him in Canada where he drove a taxi.
A few weeks later, after pocketing 400,000 rupees (8,510 dollars), Singh went back to Canada, promising his then 24-year-old pregnant bride he would return for her within a year.
“But he never come back,” Kaur said. “Whenever I asked my in-laws about him, they used to beat me and tell me to get lost. After a couple of years, I moved to my mother’s house. My son doesn’t even know who his father is.”
Kaur is one of an estimated 16,000 women in the Punjab who have been abandoned by suitors working abroad who come back home briefly in hopes of finding a wife who can pay a dowry.
Sixteen-thousand. That’s insane. And before you question my use of the word “intent” in my introduction, read on:
“It’s a very planned crime by the entire family,” said Adarsh Sharma of the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCD) which is investigating the cases.
“What usually happens is that these boys come home for a holiday during which they get married after taking loads of money as dowry — money that would help them abroad. After some time, the grooms go back and the girls begin an endless wait.”
That the men who use these disposable marriages as get-rich-quick schemes are employed in professions that aren’t lucrative didn’t surprise me, however, the community that most of them apparently hail from did.
Most of the suitors are working as taxi drivers, electricians, waiters and gas station attendants in the United States, Canada, Britain and the Gulf countries, Sharma said. A majority of them are Sikh, the largest expatriate Indian community.
Expatriate. The allure of a stronger currency lining your daughter’s future joint-bank account; the promise of immigration…two irresistible forces convince Indian parents that these men are sought-after, and blind them to the ugly potential scenario of a well-ensconced foreign girlfriend/wife, occupying the space that their daughter hopes to claim.
And what of those duped daughters?
…many say they were forced to work as slaves by in-laws, beaten and eventually sent back to their mothers…Some muster enough strength to fight a legal battle while others just let it go. According to the co-director of the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, K. K. Singh, the women have a plethora of legal rights under the Hindu Marriage Act, including the ability to file for divorce.
The plethora of rights and strategies that “holiday wives” can use include attempts to reclaim their dowry, charging their phantom spouses with harassment or torture, requesting separation and alimony or pleading for “the restoration of conjugal rights.” The victims may also find that international laws regarding marriage are relevant, but laws aren’t going to accomplish jack if their NRI husbands don’t respond.
In Ludhiana, which unfortunately bears the sad distinction of being the “epicenter” for this horrid trend, “holiday wives” gathered to share their nightmarish experiences;
Gurprinder Singh’s husband left her to work in a restaurant in Spain after taking money from Singh’s father. Recently, he allegedly came back to Ludhiana and remarried after taking another huge dowry.
Showing pictures of the remarriage, the 30-year-old said she was now trying to get a case registered against him.
“He is hiding in Ludhiana waiting for a visa to go back but police are not arresting him. I want to teach him a lesson,” Singh said.
Something tells me he’s not interested in learning. Meanwhile, the grim cynic within is just happy they didn’t douse her with kerosene before having a “kitchen fire”… 🙁
Well, this is fairly disgusting. What kind of person does this?
I think keeping a spotlight on this sort of thing, within our own community, is very important. Thanks anna, for posting about this.
Repugnant!
What can the poor women in India do? Guess some more scrutiny..
At our end: am tempted to start an outing campaign — float these rascals’ photos around
Perhaps the founders of Sepia Mutiny can have a similar “Punjab’s 10 Most Wanted” list as a sister site?
“tis a thought…you have the clout and the reader base…
Sad story.
On business travel I was over at a Holiday Inn Express owned by some Patels. Unable to sleep, I was hanging out by the breakfast bar getting some hot chocolate when I struck up a conversation with the night shift manager.
He mentioned that the girl who checked me in earlier in the day had a rough story.
Her family is pretty well off in India and arranged her marriage to a good family friend’s son over here. Unfortunately, 3 weeks after the she came to the USA, the husband ran off with his girlfriend. The guy was an idiot to begin with who was unemployed (by choice) and really just mooching off is family and his girlfriend.
The girl, 3 weeks into her time in the USA was abandoned. The inspiring part of this story is that she managed along with her inlaws to convince her husband NOT to file for divorce. She wanted to stay here and make it on her own (even though she was filthy rich in India). Her pride did not allow her to fail. So at the time I was passing through she was managing the Motel and working another job just to get on her own feet. Not the same as the fraud the blog entry talks about, but something on similar lines.
People MUST increase the level of scrutiny and take off the blinders that say “America” and look at the character of the person.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon of desi women being “ATMs” is also imported here. In fact, several of the domestic violence survivors I’m working with right now happen to be unwitting Punjabi girls: coaxed into marriage with huge dowries, brought to this country in good faith, then abused in every conceivable way imaginable (“What? You mean I don’t have to ‘turn around’ if he says so?”) until the girl gets enough courage to leave and work through the messy litigation surrounding orders of protection, divorce, and immigration limbo hell to attain legal status in the U.S. If a non-citizen marries a legal permanent resident or U.S. citizen, then she has better chances of being able to stay in this country. See VAWA for more information regarding this lengthy process. H1-B spouses are so out of luck (see previous SM post on that). Should the woman decide to process with a VAWA petition, she faces up to at least 1 year (!) before she’s eligible to legally work in this country, and possibly 8 years before she can ever legally leave the country!!!! Breaking it down, that means Sweetie can’t go back home to see her sisters Twinkle and Sparkle get married or rush on a red-eye to see her ailing parents on their deathbed.
Believe it or not, it isn’t just the “FOBs” who are guilty of this coercion. Sadly, a few of my second-generation brothers also partake of this incredibly sadistic practice. A few of the abusers even went back to the motherland to fetch another bride!
What we need is more education – on the part of parents and the government, Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/U.S. – to make women aware of the possible dangers of marrying a foreign national without prior background checks. It has seriously gotten so bad that auntie so-and-so’s best blessings are really not good enough.
Blank: that is one bizarre case. Rare is it that the woman wants to hold on to a marriage like that, unless……..she’s afraid of disappointing her parents or she’s concerned about getting a green card.
Ank G: it would be wonderful to get a ‘mug-shots’ yearbook for these assholes, but privacy laws and increasingly bewildering and bureaucratic immigration laws prohibit the public from completely finding out and/or disclosing this information. Sad, but true.
AF,
She doesn’t want to hold on to the marriage as much as she wants to stay here and prove herself. She was young to begin with (21-22?) and wanted to get on her own two feet. The community was helping her out after hearing what happened. Her in-laws, local business folk, everyone in that little community decided to support her.
I do not any more details, buts I pray for her good luck and hopefully she can take control of her destiny.
they should prosecute the bandits
prove herself to whom? make “what” on her own? Why is it so important to stay out here once you get out here? Particularly if one comes from a rich family who will support her..
A citizen of the Philippines age 46 married a US citizen 68 years old man to gain entry to US. The husband had a stoke and now unable to speak and living in a nursing home. She decided to abandon her husband and moved to San Diego and work. He has 3 children who visits him regulary. The wife filed a false life insurance for her husband after he had a stoke. She is still getting his social security since she is still married to him. She threatened to divorce him several times. Any ideas on what to do or any advise from anybody. thank you.
i hope these fake nri’s are brought to notice and be made most wanted. a whole life is wasted in a few years by these criminals. indian govt u can tackle border militants but what about indian terrorists who marry, rape and rob our sisters .
This is actually now quite common in South Africa with an influx of men from Pakistan, China and Nigeria all looking to hook up with Indian women just to get citizenship. I know so many women who have been duped only to discover that their ‘man’ has a wife and family wherever he’s from and once he’s got what he wanted, he brings them over to live in SA and leaves the SA woman. There’s also alot of corruption, you can be married on paper and not even know it so now there’s a site set up for SA women to check their marital status because so many are finding themselves ‘married’ to foreign men they have never met or heard off. There’s a big court case on at the moment, an older Pakistani man married into a wealthy SA family here. His young wife had their first baby and was pregnant with their second. She found out that he was still married to a Chinese women who was planning on coming to SA. The man had the pregnant SA’n wife and baby killed as well as her father who was in the house at the time. This stuff needs to be publicised as a warning to others.