In a bid to address the issue of Non-Resident Indian (NRI) husbands abandoning their wives, Indian government has proposed to seize their properties.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs received 3,328 distress calls from NRI women between January 1 2015 and November 20, 2017.
Thousands of Indian women have been abandoned by their NRI husbands in India and abroad. Many women have complained about abandonment, harassment, dowry demands, physical abuse and passport seizure.
reports that “an inter-ministerial committee has recommended that either the properties of the husband or his relatives should be seized in such cases.”
Such attachment of property is usually done in civil cases to either compel the presence of the accused in the court or provide monetary support to the complainant.
India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development has confirmed to that a proposal to seize the property of relatives has been made and soon there could be a legal remedy for abandoned women to claim justice.
This proposal is in addition to series of other measures being discussed and implemented by the Indian government.
In 2017, Minister for Women and Child Development (WCD), Maneka Gandhi, had said, “From now registration of all marriages will be linked to the women and child development ministry’s website. This will be in place by the end of this month.”
That decision was taken during an inter-ministerial meeting where Minister of External Affairs (MEA) Sushma Swaraj, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad were present besides Gandhi.
Some states in India have made registration of marriages, mandatory but a large number of states do not have mandatory registration of marriage.
NGO published a paper stating that Gujarat was home to 12,000 abandoned women in 2004 and approximately 25,000 wives of NRI men were found to be deserted in Punjab in 2007.
Earlier in June, a three-member committee comprising officials of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs decided to launch a web portal to help women abandoned by their NRI husbands abroad.
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