Fraudulent NRI Marriages and the Issues related to NRI Marriages

NRI marriages are understood as marriage between Indian women from India and Indian man residing outside India. Overseas Indians, regardless of their status, make up a sizable proportion of Indian society, In general, these Indians have brought with them not only their religion, traditions, culture, languages, and food habits, but traditional Indian marriages. Indian women are married with the hope to rejuvenate the Indian culture and traditions in the way they practiced in their homeland, and thus leading to acculturation. However, the incidents of failed and fraudulent marriages of Indian Women with NRIs are increasing day by day. The problems in Overseas Indian marriages are complex in nature as these often fall within the purview of both the Private International Law and the homeland law, The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. In recent times dispute related to child custody has been surfaced out of the fraudulent NRI Marriages. Besides, NRI husbands abandon their wives for the termination of marriages and after such abandonment of wives in their original countries and initiate divorce proceedings in foreign lands. In many cases, the women are physically abused and mentally harassed before they are forced to flee. Another rising issue is dowry, even though it is banned in India, the groom’s family seeks dowry indirectly implicating the security of the newly married couple or as a condition for the couple’s marriage while the groom flees away, and his wife awaits her visa. The research paper aims to throws light on the present conditions of NRI marriages and highlights the different approaches to addressing these problems one of them being mandatory Registration of Marriage of Non-Resident Indian Bill, 2019 and the author will bring upon their suggestions from the research on this topic.