NRI Marriages: The Transnational Conundrum

This research paper deals with labyrinthine of various issues involved in NRI Marriages. Largely it includes criminal offences in NRI marriages like cruelty by the husband or his relatives, criminal breach of trust by misappropriation of a woman’s personal property, dowry wrongs, abandonment of spouse, forced marriages, criminal neglect to maintain spouse, children or parents, bigamous marriages and commission of adultery. Lately, it has given rise to procedural controversies in the sphere of Private International Law itself, like parallel adjudication of matrimonial disputes which has further given rise to anti injunction suits. There are other set of issues which has raised legislative questions in India, for instance Inter parental child custody disputes has raised questions on India’s status of conformity with Hague Convention; whether “irretrievable breakdown of marriage” should be included as ground of divorce legislatively; revisiting the bilateral extradition treaties in order to curtail matrimonial criminal offences in NRI marriages, for example, to include domestic violence as a criterion for seeking custody of an accused. All these issues are result of the loopholes in Indian legislative setup on NRI marriages and sole dependence on judiciary in this regard. The answer therefore lies in giving NRIs law which is applicable to them as Indians rather than leaving them in a transnational limbo and letting them invade the Indian system with judgement of foreign jurisdictions which do not find applicability in the Indian system.