Some of the major issue faced by a woman in an NRI marriage are as follows:
1. Woman married to an NRI husband, abandoned even before being taken to the foreign country of his residence. This is one of the typical instances where after a quick engagement, followed by a massive wedding and a huge dowry, the NRI husband flies out of India while the wife waits for her visa. In such cases, the husband abandons his legally wedded wife, promising to soon send her ticket that never came. In many instances, the woman would already have been pregnant when he left and so both she and the child (who was born later) were abandoned. The husband never called or wrote and never came back again.
2. Woman after marriage is taken to the foreign country being abandoned in the alien land. In such cases a Woman who went to her husband’s home in a foreign country only to be brutally battered, assaulted, abused both mentally and physically, ill fed, and ill-treated by him in several other ways. She was therefore either forced to flee or was forcibly sent back. In some cases, the woman was also not allowed to bring back her children along. In many cases, the children were abducted or forcibly taken away from the woman. There are even circumstances were the woman who reached the foreign country of her husband’s residence and waited at the international airport there, only to find that her husband would not turn up at all. In such cases, Woman is abandoned in the foreign country with absolutely no support or means of sustenance or escape and without even the legal permission to stay on in that country. In certain cases, the woman learnt on reaching the country of her NRI husband’s residence that he was already married in the other country to another woman, whom he continued to live with. He may have married his new wife due to pressure from his parents and to please Them or sometimes even to use her like a domestic help. There are also cases where a woman later learnt that her NRI husband had given false information on any or all the following: his job, immigration status, earning, property, marital status and other material particulars, to convince her into the marriage.
3. Ex-parte divorce decrees have been passed by the foreign courts. Many husbands often use the lenient laws in foreign countries to obtain ex parte divorces from foreign courts. This becomes a weapon in their hands to deny maintenance to women who are dumped in India. Since the NRIs rely on foreign court granted divorces, the women only come to know through foreign court notices about the divorce.
