http://www.canada.com/vancouver/theprovince/news/story.html?id=f2bc4dfb-0d2a-403f-9685-0a583a1c1e0d

Abandoned brides: WEDDING WOES
Indian men in B.C. accused of marrying for money, then filing for divorce

Lena Sin
The Province

Sunday, May 22, 2005

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CREDIT: Nick Procaylo, The Province
Archana Verma (right) is seeking spousal support from her husband, Kumud Kumar Verma, seen above between Archana's father, Shiv Singh Chauhan (right), and Kumud's father, Ramesh Verma. Both sides dispute whether the marriage dowry is playing a part in their divorce.



In her parents' dimly lit home, Satwinder Kaur Jumb remains trapped in a past she wishes she could take back.

Deserted by her Canadian groom less than three weeks after they married, Jumb has been waiting in vain for his return to India for half a decade.

She still has the framed wedding photos hanging on her walls; the door to her home in India is still open, she says.

Halfway across the globe, Jumb's groom lives in an equally sparse basement suite in South Vancouver.

Ashwani Kumar Mehmi says the bride's family forced him into the marriage after taking his money during a visit to India.

He claims he abandoned his wife out of fear for his life.

Their stories are at odds, but such stories usually are in the tragic world of abandoned brides, runaway grooms and holiday wives.

The Jumb and Mehmi case aside, light is being shed on an alarming social trend featuring Indian men living abroad who return to their homeland in search of a wife -- and the dowry that comes with marriage.

After a wedding and days of celebration, the runaway grooms disappear back to countries such as Canada, Britain and Australia while their brides are left wondering and waiting.

In Punjab, the overwhelming desire to go overseas fuels the arranged-marriage industry and makes it easier for women to fall victim to marital fraud.

The Punjab-based Lok Bhalai Party estimates that there are at least 15,000 cases of abandoned wives in that state alone, saying the phenomenon has grown to shocking levels, according to the Vancouver-based newspaper Asian Pacific Post.

So far, the party has taken more than 1,000 cases of abandoned brides or "holiday wives" to court.

The Minister of State for Overseas Indian Affairs has estimated there are another 12,000 cases of abandoned wives in the state of Gujarat.

Police in the Punjab city of Chandigarh held a news conference on the issue last year.

They reported seeing a 40-per-cent increase in the number of cases of marriage fraud involving Indians from overseas in the past few years.

The situation in India is so out of hand that authorities there are even considering employing spies to rout out unscrupulous bachelors and their families in Canada, Britain and Australia.

Goldy Bhatia, a settlement counsellor with the Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society in Surrey, says the driving factor is greed.

In some cases, one dowry isn't even enough. After returning to Canada, the groom's family demands a second dowry, leaving the bride's chances of moving to Canada dependent on whether her parents give in to the extortion.

"This is pure fraud," said Bhatia. "This is violating someone's intimacy and taking someone's dreams."

And with procedures of law differing from country to country, the grooms are able to make their escape with little consequence, said Bhatia.

Jumb, 26, believes her trust has been violated and that's left her feeling raw. While she's been waiting in Ludhiana, Punjab, for her husband's return, Mehmi was filing for divorce in B.C. Supreme Court.

The divorce was granted on Feb. 7, 2003, but Jumb says it wasn't until six months ago that she became aware of the divorce when she was shown court documents for the first time.

Mehmi, who keeps his divorce certificate in a manila envelope in his bedroom, maintains Jumb was served notice through a notary public in India three years ago.

Either way, Indian authorities are not recognizing the divorce and Jumb has no desire to remarry.

"I can't remarry. How can I?" Jumb asked in a telephone interview from her home in Ludhiana.

"I'm still tied emotionally to him. How can I move on? I've still got the wedding pictures on the wall. It's been five years."

The beginnings of their relationship are still fresh in her mind. Jumb can still vividly remember their initial phone conversations and then seeing his "handsome" face for the first time.

The two families came together after a matchmaker in Ludhiana arranged the wedding.

The matchmaker assured Jumb that her Canadian groom would be kind; her soon-to-be mother-in-law, who came bearing gifts from Vancouver, promised the family could be trusted.

So in April 2000, at the insistence of the groom's family that the wedding be held immediately, Jumb solemnized her marriage with a photo of Mehmi.

A few months later, on July 23, the newlyweds met for the first time as Mehmi flew from B.C. to India to "remarry" his bride in order to have the marriage officially registered.

Jumb's parents took out loans to pay for the dowry of $500,000 rupees (about $15,350 Cdn) as well as the cost of the wedding and gold rings and jewelry for Mehmi's relatives.

Ten days later, Mehmi bid his bride what was meant to be a temporary farewell. She hasn't heard from him since.

- - -

There are extended moments of silence as Mehmi sits on a stool in his dark living room in Vancouver, trying to find the words to explain how his marriage broke down.

The 33-year-old casino dealer says repeatedly that Jumb's family "forced me to get married" -- but he has trouble explaining how they did it or why.

Mehmi says he arrived in India expecting to be greeted by Jumb as well as his own brothers and sisters. When his family didn't show up, he asked to be taken to see his siblings.

Instead, he says, Jumb's parents took him to their home. He alleges the Jumbs took his passport, close to $4,000 Cdn and $7,000 US of his own money, and kept him at their house for 20 days.

"They never let me go walk by myself," says Mehmi. "Their whole family was in the house. Wherever I go, they will also come with me."

It wasn't long before he changed his mind on the marriage, but Mehmi says he went through with it because Jumb's family was constantly drunk and fighting and he was worried about his own welfare.

Mehmi left India on Aug. 2, 2000, after Jumb's family took him to the airport and he "forced" them to give him his passport back.

Upon his return to Vancouver, he immediately changed his phone number. He didn't want to speak to his wife "because I was mad." He later filed for divorce in B.C. Supreme Court.

Mehmi claims to know nothing about a dowry and insists he never married Jumb for money. But later, he says his mother might have received money from Jumb's parents, as is customary in Indian weddings.

"Why would I take money from them? They took money from me," says Mehmi.

He goes quiet, then wonders aloud why his marriage is coming back to haunt him.

"I wish I never went to India," he says.

- - -

In India, the trail of jilted brides has garnered much media attention and some politicians have taken up the cause, staging rallies in which thousands of wives gather to relate their odysseys of abandonment.

This year, the fourth annual Indian Society of International Law conference held in New Delhi opened with politicians and judges calling for changes in legislation to protect brides from runaway husbands.

The phenomenon has also given rise to new businesses such as private detective agencies and law firms that specialize in helping deserted brides reclaim their rights.

"This is a social evil and a stigma on the reputation of Canada and Canadians in general," said Vancouver lawyer Amandeep Singh of the law firm Singh, Abrahams and Joomratty.

The activist and lawyer has set up shop in Punjab to take on cases of marital fraud and is providing free initial advice to abandoned brides. The lawsuits will be fought for a contingency fee constituting a certain percentage of the damages claimed from the other party.

On the flip side, Singh has also been dealing with cases in which the grooms are victims of marital fraud. He says there are many instances in which the bride, lured by the chance of life abroad, marries a non-resident Indian and then vanishes upon reaching Canada.

But the courts in India remain reluctant to take action in many cases since it is never easy to pinpoint the true reason for a marriage meltdown, said Singh.

While brides might allege their husbands only married to get their hands on the dowry, there's always the possibility that the couple separated due to incompatibility.

Case in point: Bhatia is now helping 29-year-old Archana Verma through her divorce with her physician husband, Kumud Kumar Verma. While the bride is seeking spousal support in B.C., both sides dispute whether dowry was part of the conflict.

The bride's father, Shiv Singh Chauhan, has filed a police complaint in Chandigarh, Punjab.

The bride's father alleges the dowry amounted to $800,000 rupees (about $24,560 Cdn).

Reached in Delta, the husband says the allegations are flat-out lies. He says he spent a lot of money sponsoring his wife from India and the separation is due to incompatibility.

"It's a domestic dispute, nothing else. We just don't get along," said the husband. "It's incompatibility, there's nothing else.

"There's infidelity, incompatibility, there are so many things involved -- but dowry is not one of them."

- - -

For Jumb, lawsuits, police complaints and punishment are the last things on her mind.

These days, she spends her time working at the makeshift beauty parlour she opened at her parents' home and going to classes for graphic design.

She says she still loves her husband and her parents give their reassurance that they don't think of her as a divorcee, a status that carries a social stigma in India.

Jumb, who says she never entered the marriage for the chance to immigrate to Canada, says she'd love to have Mehmi come back to India.

"The door is still open," she says.

If that day ever comes, Jumb hopes to get some answers to the questions that have been running through her head for the past five years:

"Why didn't he phone me and say, 'I didn't like your family,' or 'I didn't like you?' He just totally cut me off . . . I have really suffered.

"He treated me less than an animal. I had no value. He should be a man and tell me why he did this to me.

"Otherwise, I'm left to wonder."

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