The Supreme Court (SC) of India is in favour of providing speedy justice to women abandoned by their NRI husbands. After hearing a case, an apex court bench headed by Chief Justice of India, Sharad A Bobde, served a notice to the Government of India and fixed next hearing in July.
The notice was in response to the petition filed by an NGO, Pravasi Legal Cell, which has sought the court’s intervention against the sufferings of women at the hands of some NRI husbands.
The petition said, “India has the world’s largest diaspora, according to figures from the United Nations. It is imperative to frame guidelines to provide professional and speedy justice to women abandoned by their NRI husbands.”
The NGO came out with three instances of women being harassed by their NRI husbands.
- There are women who are abandoned by their NRI husbands soon after the marriage. The women lose contact with the husband, in some cases, even after being pregnant. In this case both – woman and child – are abandoned with no clue about the man.
- In the second category there are women who are taken to a foreign land and subjected to harassment and abuse by their NRI husbands. Even on arrival at the countries of their husbands’ job or business such women have no one to receive at the airports. They are left stranded, and some cases ex-parte divorce judgements have been passed by the foreign courts.
The petition by the Pravasi Legal Cell said, “such women experience technical and legal obstacles concerning jurisdiction of courts, serving of notices or orders, enforcement of orders or even find themselves tangled in ‘simultaneous retaliatory legal proceedings’ in a foreign country.
“A woman abandoned by her NRI husband in India has to face obstacles at every point, starting with the lodging of an FIR. Police are reluctant to take the crime seriously,” the petition said.
- There are women who suffer due to judicial and bureaucratic processes. The petition said the process of issuance of look-out circulars against errant NRI husbands takes months to clear the bureaucratic maze. The documents have to pass various offices like the Bureau of Immigration and the Foreign Regional Registration Office.
At times, it is even difficult to trace the country to which the husband in question has gone.