India: First comes fraud, then comes marriage
In Punjab, a humble passport officer strikes back against “holiday marriages.”
JALANDHAR, Punjab — Seated in the regional passport office in
Jalandhar, a provincial city at the heart of India's breadbasket,
39-year-old Sarabjit Kaur tells a harrowing story.
For more than a decade, she has endured a miserable sham marriage.
Soon after she married, her husband fled to the UK. To force her parents
to pay an illegal dowry, her in-laws have allegedly beaten her, forced
her to do menial chores, denied her food, and cut off the electricity to
her room.
At first, Kaur's in-laws refused to acknowledge the birth of their
granddaughter at all. Today, having nominally disowned their son, they
force Kaur and her daughter, now 10, to live as unwelcome guests in a
tiny room, sequestered from the rest of the house.
“I'm not allowed to put my clothes on the wire for drying,” Kaur
said. “I'm not allowed to use the water pump. My daughter is not allowed
inside the garden for cycling. I'm not allowed to wash my clothes in
the washing machine — which has been given by my parents!”
Kaur is one of thousands of women in Punjab who have fallen victim to such marriage scams.
Armed with a passport and a plane ticket, unscrupulous men and their
families exploit the value of a green card or foreign work permit to
extort exorbitant dowries from their brides. They marry and then flee.
They may take on second wives to obtain a virtual slave. Or they may
simply make a trip to India for a so-called “holiday marriage” —
complete with a big party, lavish gifts, and a week of free sex.
According to India's National Commission for Women, as many as 20,000 brides have not even seen their husbands since their supposed honeymoon.
Recently, however, these women have received a lifeline from an unlikely hero: Passport officer Parneet Singh.
Using an obscure footnote in Indian law, Singh has begun canceling
the passports of runaway husbands — forcing them to face the music or go
into hiding abroad as illegal aliens. And it's already working.
“We have been able to solve about 60 or 70 cases with this experiment,” said Singh.
For decades, the Doaba region of the Punjab — the fertile lands
between the Beas and Sutlej rivers — has been known for offering its
daughters in marriage to “non-resident Indians” or “NRIs” working in
Canada, the UK and the US. Fraud seems nearly as common as love in these
arranged unions.
“We have a real problem here in our region. There are 30,000 women
[with problem NRI marriages] in Punjab,” said Singh. “NRIs come here,
they marry those innocent girls, and they leave for abroad. The girls
are mostly from poor backgrounds, and the guys are rich. When they leave
this country, they are not bothered. And the girls are left to their
fate.”
Out of those 30,000, Singh says some 15,000 come from his region,
which comprises four districts: Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur and
SBS Nagar.
For women like Kaur, who is still fighting in court to force her
husband to take financial responsibility for their daughter, there was
virtually nowhere to go for help. Due to the low status afforded to
women in most Indian communities, the police generally side with the
husband's family.
India's courts are notoriously slow, and extradition from the US or
Canada for murder — much less a marital dispute — is virtually out of
the question. And the social stigma associated with being divorced, or
even returning home to live with their parents, leaves many women with
no choice but to endure.
As Officer Singh discovered, however, where the NRIs' ability to run
for foreign shores helped husbands to cheat with impunity, unless they'd
been granted foreign citizenship, their freedom and their livelihood
depended on their ability to get and maintain a valid Indian passport.
“When the passport is canceled, what are the problems they have?
First, if they are in this country, they'll not be able to leave,” Singh
said. “Second, if people come to visit their relatives here in India,
when they land at the airport their passport is taken by the immigration
authorities. Third, suppose a person is staying in Chicago. His
passport gets expired. If we have already canceled this passport, he
will not be able to get it renewed. He has two choices: either to stay
illegally in that country or to come back.”
For most men, that creates a huge incentive to resolve their marital disputes as swiftly as possible.
Navdeep, a 29-year-old doctor from Jalandhar, had been married to a
marine engineer for nine months before he and his family started to
insult her and demand money — even going so far as to throw her from a
speeding car and attempt to strangle her on two separate occasions.
“This is not a good country for women,” Navdeep told GlobalPost in
Singh's office. “You can beat her like an animal, and she won't be able
to do anything.”
Today, Navdeep is divorced. But that's thanks to Singh's passport office, rather than the court system.
“If a husband [involved in a dowry or divorce case] holds a passport
with a foreign visa, he's supposed to surrender it in court,” Navdeep
said. “But none of the courts, not the high court, not the civil court,
asked him to surrender his passport.”
Her husband was on his way out of the country when Navdeep rushed to
Singh's office to lodge a complaint that he was trying to flee from a
merchant ship leaving one of India's dozens of ports. Soon, though, he
was back in Jalandhar.
“Because his passport was impounded, I got justice," said Navdeep. "I got divorced.”
Kaur's husband is still abroad. But she's confident that Singh's move
to cancel the man's passport has turned the tide in her fight, too.
Because of Singh, her husband has not been able to renew his visa, so he
has been living illegally in the UK since 2010 — unable to work as a
university professor.
And just the day before she met with GlobalPost, she won a court
judgment saying that she had the right to live in the matrimonial home,
regardless of whether the deed says it belongs to her husband or to his
parents.
She believes that a financial settlement for her daughter can't be far down the road.
“Parneet Singh has totally changed the scenario of the case,” Kaur
said. “I was begging shelter and maintenance for me and my daughter.
Now, they are begging in front of me — 'Please, do not do this to our
son.'”
In Punjab, a humble passport officer strikes back against “holiday marriages.”
JALANDHAR, Punjab — Seated in the regional passport office in Jalandhar, a provincial city at the heart of India's breadbasket, 39-year-old Sarabjit Kaur tells a harrowing story.
For more than a decade, she has endured a miserable sham marriage. Soon after she married, her husband fled to the UK. To force her parents to pay an illegal dowry, her in-laws have allegedly beaten her, forced her to do menial chores, denied her food, and cut off the electricity to her room.
At first, Kaur's in-laws refused to acknowledge the birth of their granddaughter at all. Today, having nominally disowned their son, they force Kaur and her daughter, now 10, to live as unwelcome guests in a tiny room, sequestered from the rest of the house.
“I'm not allowed to put my clothes on the wire for drying,” Kaur said. “I'm not allowed to use the water pump. My daughter is not allowed inside the garden for cycling. I'm not allowed to wash my clothes in the washing machine — which has been given by my parents!”
According to India's National Commission for Women, as many as 20,000 brides have not even seen their husbands since their supposed honeymoon.
Recently, however, these women have received a lifeline from an unlikely hero: Passport officer Parneet Singh.
Using an obscure footnote in Indian law, Singh has begun canceling the passports of runaway husbands — forcing them to face the music or go into hiding abroad as illegal aliens. And it's already working.
“We have been able to solve about 60 or 70 cases with this experiment,” said Singh.
For decades, the Doaba region of the Punjab — the fertile lands between the Beas and Sutlej rivers — has been known for offering its daughters in marriage to “non-resident Indians” or “NRIs” working in Canada, the UK and the US. Fraud seems nearly as common as love in these arranged unions.
“We have a real problem here in our region. There are 30,000 women [with problem NRI marriages] in Punjab,” said Singh. “NRIs come here, they marry those innocent girls, and they leave for abroad. The girls are mostly from poor backgrounds, and the guys are rich. When they leave this country, they are not bothered. And the girls are left to their fate.”
Out of those 30,000, Singh says some 15,000 come from his region, which comprises four districts: Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur and SBS Nagar.
For women like Kaur, who is still fighting in court to force her husband to take financial responsibility for their daughter, there was virtually nowhere to go for help. Due to the low status afforded to women in most Indian communities, the police generally side with the husband's family.
India's courts are notoriously slow, and extradition from the US or Canada for murder — much less a marital dispute — is virtually out of the question. And the social stigma associated with being divorced, or even returning home to live with their parents, leaves many women with no choice but to endure.
As Officer Singh discovered, however, where the NRIs' ability to run for foreign shores helped husbands to cheat with impunity, unless they'd been granted foreign citizenship, their freedom and their livelihood depended on their ability to get and maintain a valid Indian passport.
“When the passport is canceled, what are the problems they have? First, if they are in this country, they'll not be able to leave,” Singh said. “Second, if people come to visit their relatives here in India, when they land at the airport their passport is taken by the immigration authorities. Third, suppose a person is staying in Chicago. His passport gets expired. If we have already canceled this passport, he will not be able to get it renewed. He has two choices: either to stay illegally in that country or to come back.”
For most men, that creates a huge incentive to resolve their marital disputes as swiftly as possible.
Navdeep, a 29-year-old doctor from Jalandhar, had been married to a marine engineer for nine months before he and his family started to insult her and demand money — even going so far as to throw her from a speeding car and attempt to strangle her on two separate occasions.
“If a husband [involved in a dowry or divorce case] holds a passport with a foreign visa, he's supposed to surrender it in court,” Navdeep said. “But none of the courts, not the high court, not the civil court, asked him to surrender his passport.”
Her husband was on his way out of the country when Navdeep rushed to Singh's office to lodge a complaint that he was trying to flee from a merchant ship leaving one of India's dozens of ports. Soon, though, he was back in Jalandhar.
“Because his passport was impounded, I got justice," said Navdeep. "I got divorced.”
Kaur's husband is still abroad. But she's confident that Singh's move to cancel the man's passport has turned the tide in her fight, too. Because of Singh, her husband has not been able to renew his visa, so he has been living illegally in the UK since 2010 — unable to work as a university professor.
And just the day before she met with GlobalPost, she won a court judgment saying that she had the right to live in the matrimonial home, regardless of whether the deed says it belongs to her husband or to his parents.
She believes that a financial settlement for her daughter can't be far down the road.
“Parneet Singh has totally changed the scenario of the case,” Kaur said. “I was begging shelter and maintenance for me and my daughter. Now, they are begging in front of me — 'Please, do not do this to our son.'”
JALANDHAR, Punjab — Seated in the regional passport office in Jalandhar, a provincial city at the heart of India's breadbasket, 39-year-old Sarabjit Kaur tells a harrowing story.
For more than a decade, she has endured a miserable sham marriage. Soon after she married, her husband fled to the UK. To force her parents to pay an illegal dowry, her in-laws have allegedly beaten her, forced her to do menial chores, denied her food, and cut off the electricity to her room.
At first, Kaur's in-laws refused to acknowledge the birth of their granddaughter at all. Today, having nominally disowned their son, they force Kaur and her daughter, now 10, to live as unwelcome guests in a tiny room, sequestered from the rest of the house.
“I'm not allowed to put my clothes on the wire for drying,” Kaur said. “I'm not allowed to use the water pump. My daughter is not allowed inside the garden for cycling. I'm not allowed to wash my clothes in the washing machine — which has been given by my parents!”
Kaur is one of thousands of women in Punjab who have fallen victim to such marriage scams.
Armed with a passport and a plane ticket, unscrupulous men and their
families exploit the value of a green card or foreign work permit to
extort exorbitant dowries from their brides. They marry and then flee.
They may take on second wives to obtain a virtual slave. Or they may
simply make a trip to India for a so-called “holiday marriage” —
complete with a big party, lavish gifts, and a week of free sex.According to India's National Commission for Women, as many as 20,000 brides have not even seen their husbands since their supposed honeymoon.
Recently, however, these women have received a lifeline from an unlikely hero: Passport officer Parneet Singh.
Using an obscure footnote in Indian law, Singh has begun canceling the passports of runaway husbands — forcing them to face the music or go into hiding abroad as illegal aliens. And it's already working.
“We have been able to solve about 60 or 70 cases with this experiment,” said Singh.
For decades, the Doaba region of the Punjab — the fertile lands between the Beas and Sutlej rivers — has been known for offering its daughters in marriage to “non-resident Indians” or “NRIs” working in Canada, the UK and the US. Fraud seems nearly as common as love in these arranged unions.
“We have a real problem here in our region. There are 30,000 women [with problem NRI marriages] in Punjab,” said Singh. “NRIs come here, they marry those innocent girls, and they leave for abroad. The girls are mostly from poor backgrounds, and the guys are rich. When they leave this country, they are not bothered. And the girls are left to their fate.”
Out of those 30,000, Singh says some 15,000 come from his region, which comprises four districts: Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur and SBS Nagar.
For women like Kaur, who is still fighting in court to force her husband to take financial responsibility for their daughter, there was virtually nowhere to go for help. Due to the low status afforded to women in most Indian communities, the police generally side with the husband's family.
India's courts are notoriously slow, and extradition from the US or Canada for murder — much less a marital dispute — is virtually out of the question. And the social stigma associated with being divorced, or even returning home to live with their parents, leaves many women with no choice but to endure.
As Officer Singh discovered, however, where the NRIs' ability to run for foreign shores helped husbands to cheat with impunity, unless they'd been granted foreign citizenship, their freedom and their livelihood depended on their ability to get and maintain a valid Indian passport.
“When the passport is canceled, what are the problems they have? First, if they are in this country, they'll not be able to leave,” Singh said. “Second, if people come to visit their relatives here in India, when they land at the airport their passport is taken by the immigration authorities. Third, suppose a person is staying in Chicago. His passport gets expired. If we have already canceled this passport, he will not be able to get it renewed. He has two choices: either to stay illegally in that country or to come back.”
For most men, that creates a huge incentive to resolve their marital disputes as swiftly as possible.
Navdeep, a 29-year-old doctor from Jalandhar, had been married to a marine engineer for nine months before he and his family started to insult her and demand money — even going so far as to throw her from a speeding car and attempt to strangle her on two separate occasions.
“This is not a good country for women,” Navdeep told GlobalPost in
Singh's office. “You can beat her like an animal, and she won't be able
to do anything.”
Today, Navdeep is divorced. But that's thanks to Singh's passport office, rather than the court system.“If a husband [involved in a dowry or divorce case] holds a passport with a foreign visa, he's supposed to surrender it in court,” Navdeep said. “But none of the courts, not the high court, not the civil court, asked him to surrender his passport.”
Her husband was on his way out of the country when Navdeep rushed to Singh's office to lodge a complaint that he was trying to flee from a merchant ship leaving one of India's dozens of ports. Soon, though, he was back in Jalandhar.
“Because his passport was impounded, I got justice," said Navdeep. "I got divorced.”
Kaur's husband is still abroad. But she's confident that Singh's move to cancel the man's passport has turned the tide in her fight, too. Because of Singh, her husband has not been able to renew his visa, so he has been living illegally in the UK since 2010 — unable to work as a university professor.
And just the day before she met with GlobalPost, she won a court judgment saying that she had the right to live in the matrimonial home, regardless of whether the deed says it belongs to her husband or to his parents.
She believes that a financial settlement for her daughter can't be far down the road.
“Parneet Singh has totally changed the scenario of the case,” Kaur said. “I was begging shelter and maintenance for me and my daughter. Now, they are begging in front of me — 'Please, do not do this to our son.'”
Even before the day ends and you consign this newspaper to the pile of
old papers, around 5,000 children below five years would have died in
India, not because of any killer disease(s) but largely due to
preventable causes.
Lack of food and proper diet are responsible for this dismal figure even when preventing under-nutrition is far easier - and effective - than trying to treat malnourished children. It is a pity that thousands of children die every single day in a country whose National Nutrition Mission is headed by none other than the prime minister himself.
Lack of food and proper diet are responsible for this dismal figure even when preventing under-nutrition is far easier - and effective - than trying to treat malnourished children. It is a pity that thousands of children die every single day in a country whose National Nutrition Mission is headed by none other than the prime minister himself.
The report, released yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly
in New York, builds on existing indices such as the Global Hunger Index
produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
and the Hunger Reduction Commitment Index released by the Institute of
Development Studies
Despite strong economic growth in the past few years, India is at the
bottom of the list. At the other end of the spectrum lies Peru that has
shown strong political resolve and an unshakable commitment towards
growing resources to fight child under-nutrition.This has ensured positive results. India's performance is similar to that of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen, which, too, are among the weakest performers in this area thanks to frail commitments resulting in grim results. India's neighbouring nations - Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh - have fared better than it.
In India, child under-nutrition levels are alarmingly high and
persistent - around 42% according to the last official survey in
2005-06. This is due to inadequate spending on health and nutrition,
wide economic and social inequality and weak political commitment.
India is beginning its 12th Five Year Plan and this is the right time
to invest in strong strategies on nutrition, backed by sustained and
long-term investments to tackle the challenge.Food intervention alone may not return the desired results; there has to be a 'life-cycle' approach towards tackling malnutrition, which must begin with the health of a woman before pregnancy, address all problems at the various critical stages during the birth of a child and finally ensure the healthy growth of the baby.
India already has a structure in place. It just needs to re-energise this sector if it wants to tackle the challenge sincerely.
Flood situation turns critical in central, lower Assam
The flood situation in central and lower Assam turned critical, with the
water level of the Brahmaputra rising alarmingly and flowing above the
danger mark in most places. The situation continued to be grim in upper
Assam too. The death toll in the current wave of the flood has gone up
to 18 and seven persons were reported missing on Tuesday.
As over 17.60 lakh flood-hit people, including about four lakh of them
in relief camps, suffered in 16 affected districts, food packets were
dropped by the Army and Indian Air Force helicopters in some of
worst-hit areas such as the Majuli river-island in upper Assam's Jorhat
district, Sootea in Sonitpur district, Sadiya sub-division in upper
Assam's Tinsukia district. Rescue teams of the Army and the National
Disaster Response Force (NDRF) rescued thousands of marooned people in
the affected districts and evacuated them to safer places.
The death toll comprises 5 in Tinsukia district, four in Morigaon
district, 2 each in Dhemaji and Dibrugarh districts and 1 each in
Sivasagar, Golaghat, Nagaon, Kamrup and Darrang districts.
Assam Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Prithvi Majhi and
Agriculture Minister Nilamani Sen Deka, accompanied by Chief Secretary
N.K. Das and Principal Secretary, Revenue and Disaster Management V.K.
Pipersenia, made an aerial survey of the Majuli River Island and other
flood-hit areas of upper Assam on Tuesday.
“Majuli is still completely under water. We could only see roofs of
houses of the river-island and even though we circled over it several
times during our aerial inspection we could hardly locate any place of
the island that was not submerged in floodwater,” Mr. Deka told The
Hindu after the aerial inspection. Majuli remained cut off for the six
consecutive day on Tuesday as the ferry services to and from the island
in the heart of the Brahmaputra had to be suspended.
Mr. Deka said on Tuesday the overall situation in central and lower
Assam turned critical while in upper Assam the situation remained grim
but water level started receding steadily. So far 16.70 lakh people of
2055 villages in 16 districts have been affected in the current wave of
flood, he said. Of those affected, over four lakh people have taken
shelter in 297 relief camps and 127 shelter centres. Flood has destroyed
standing crop on 1.39 lakh hectares of land. The actual crop damage
would be much more and correct assessment of the crop damage would be
possible only after the water receded. The Brahmaputra has inundated
several areas along its banks in the city and is threatening to overtop
the busy Mahatma Gandhi Road in Fancybazar area. As all low-lying areas
of the Kaziranga National Park remained submerged, floodwater overtopped
portions of the National Highway 37 passing through the park near
Haldibari in the day.
