Women’s Rights Group appeals to Home Secretary Sajid Javid to put an end to NRI men exploiting loophole in immigration law to abandon wives in India.
The UK’s largest Indian women’s group on Friday made an emotional appeal to British Home Secretary Sajid Javid to intervene to stop the widespread abandonment of Indian women by their Non-Resident Indian (NRI) husbands.
During a silent protest that turned deeply emotive at moments, members of Indian Ladies in UK (ILUK) called on Mr Javid to change immigration law relating to ‘Dependent Spouses’ – laws that have been routinely used and abused by NRI men to exploit and then abandon their wives in India.
The protest was staged on behalf of the hundreds of women that ILUK have helped and who have found themselves in legal limbo in India after being cruelly discarded by men who use a legal loophole in British immigration law to cancel their visas.
Each case follows a depressingly familiar pattern.
It involves men – both British citizens of Indian origin as well as migrants – who marry women from India, in most cases in an arranged marriage, inflict unspoken abuses on these women – from physical beatings and mental torture to dowry abuse – before abandoning them in India.
This could be for a variety of reasons – a woman reporting domestic abuse to UK authorities; a woman’s family being unable to or refusing to hand over more money or jewellery as dowry; or simply in some cases where the husband feels that the relationship has run its course.
However, instead of ensuring the well-being of their partners – who are in most cases women who have never stepped out of their family and social structures in their native India – these men will take their wives to India under the guise of “going on holiday” then abandon them there.
The women’s passports and residency permits are also taken away and in many cases where children are involved the men who are meant to be their guardians also steal the children’s documents.
Once these men return to the UK, they simply inform the Home Office that their wife is no longer their dependent and that their visa should be cancelled, a request that the Home Office carries out extremely swiftly and without any referral to the aggrieved woman.
This stands in stark contrast to the vast quantities of documents that any couple must submit or the checks that they must be subjected to when applying to obtain a dependent visa in the first instance.
The men then apply for divorces in a UK court, which promptly grants these ‘Ex Parte’ divorces which are not recognized in India.
As a result, numerous lives have been destroyed.
In fiercely patriarchal India, women find themselves marginalized by their own families and are often blamed for ‘causing’ the breakdown in marriages.
In one instance, in 2018 a young girl from a small village in south India – who was married to an IT worker – was threatened with “deportation” by her husband after her family failed to meet his dowry demands.
Fearful of being taken to India after months of abuse and coercive control, the young woman left her marital home in East London, travelled to Kent before taking her own life by jumping into the Ocean near Margate.
On those occasions when victims pluck up the courage – and the money – to return to the UK in the hope of fighting for justice, they are told that their visas have been ‘curtailed’ and are promptly turned back at the border, piling misery on victims who are already deeply traumatized.
It is alarming that a nation known historically for accepting refugees and asylum seekers can show such little compassion to these women who have legally lived, worked and built lives in the UK.
Poonam Joshi founder of ILUK said “While we are campaigning for the rights of these victims, we have been actively raising awareness amongst women in the community as well. And its due to our campaigns and awareness women have begun to refuse their men from taking them to India. Which sometimes means that these women are made homeless. Its less challenging to help someone who is abandoned in the UK than in India and our awareness has certainly helped victims from being duped. However the the same Home office that provides shelter and refuge to thousands of refugees travelling into the UK without passports on boats or by other means, refuse a refuge to an abused and destitute woman who legally entered the UK, unless she has ‘recourse to public funds’.
Everything seems to conspire against the victims. Sometimes there isn’t enough evidence – whether its physical injuries or bruising that can prove abuse – for the police to take actions against abusers. On other occasions victims are told to ‘pack their bags and go home because they will be safer there’. It breaks these victim’s spirit and this is why we open our own homes and take them in so that they don’t give up their fight for justice. “
Over the past three years, ILUK has worked tirelessly to help bring back these victims so that they can have the opportunity to fight for the justice that they are routinely denied in India – by a criminal justice system that is more interested in ‘moral policing’ the women victims rather than implementing the law.
In recent months, India’s Minister of External Affairs, Mrs Sushma Swaraj has taken a personal interest in this appalling issue – bring about new rules that has seen the passports of abusers cancelled and their property in India placed in government hands.
But as a deterrent it has failed as a vast majority of the NRI men who perpetrate these abuses are based in the West and are comfortably settled and have no requirement for an Indian passport except to travel to India, which they have no need.
According to ILUK, the problem needs to be eradicated at the source – namely at the UK Home Office itself.
It is imperative that the problem also be addressed here in the UK – specifically by doing away with rules that allow men to cancel the dependent visas of their wives with a one-line email to the Home Office.
It is vital that the Home Office take into consideration the circumstances of the women as well – at the very least that they are “aware” of a separation and/or divorce.
These women are turned back at the border the same country
Days before the protest at the Home Office head office in South London, ILUK launched the #NRINightmare on Social Media to highlight the plight of these women.
Since then, scores of victims from around the world have their personal stories – adding their geographical location to the hashtag to highlight just how global the problem; from #NRINightmareUK to #NRINightmareAustralia.
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Thank U for bringing this extremely tormenting story to public domain, although this is not new. It has been going on for many years. It is the duty of the entire Indian community to take this up with our MPs, Lords and community leaders, as this affects every one, irrespective of caste, creed or religion. Our new Home Secretary is more active and knowledgeable, being of Indian/Pakistani origin who indeed cares and willing to take on such subject matters than any of his predecessors. I am going to write to my MP and I hope every one who reads this piece will do so, united we can succeed.
Bravo. Great to watch such a strong gathering coming out for a very worthy cause.