The Union government will introduce a Bill in the coming winter session of Parliament for more stern measures against Non-Resident Indian (NRI) husbands abandoning their wives in India.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said in Hyderabad on Wednesday that the Centre already launched an institutional mechanism and the passports of 25 NRI men have been revoked recently for abandoning their wives in India and more measures were in the offing.
Apart from cancelling their passports, in some cases, the government has instructed the State police to issue Look-out-Circulars (LoC). In criminal matters involving NRIs, the investigating officer can issue LoC in cognisable offences when the husband from overseas is deliberately dodging arrest, according to Union Ministry of Women and Child Development officials.
The inter-ministerial panel comprising members of Woman and Child Development, Home and External Affairs has also decided to allow the Ministry of External Affairs to put up summons issued to NRI men who have not responded to earlier summons on its website. It also acknowledged that necessary amendments will have to be made in the Passport Act to incorporate the changes.
There has been an alarming rise in the cases coming to the National and State Commissions for Women, especially in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Punjab, related to ‘NRI marriages’ where the NRI husbands were sending divorce notices from abroad to their wives here ostensibly on grounds of incompatibility.
The divorce notices were issued when the wives came back to India or were hoping to join their husbands who left after the marriage. These women were clueless on how to fight the case legally in the courts abroad, said former Chairperson of Telangana State Commission for Women Tripurana Venkataratnam.
