RPO to tip embassies about fugitive NRI husbands’ passport status

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We will also inform employers. The aim is to get these NRIs back and face criminal cases pending against them. SIBASH KABIRAJ, RPO

CHANDIGARH:Though slowly, the noose is tightening around NRIs facing criminal charges for deserting their wives.

After suspending 50 passports of NRI husbands in the last three months, the Regional Passport Office (RPO), Chandigarh, has started writing to the respective embassies regarding the status of their document.

But going by number of pending cases (roughly 12,000) of such nature, the effort to provide justice to all the complainant women seems wanting.

Regional Passport Officer (RPO) Sibash Kabiraj said that not only are they writing to the embassies but shall also inform NRIs’ employers about the suspension of their passports. “The aim is to get these NRIs back and face the criminal cases,” said the RPO .

The RPO had started suspending the passports of these runaway grooms in June 2018. The RPO has now even started suspending the passports of in-laws of the complainant brides.

The RPO said they will write to a Ukraine-based University which has employed one such NRI, Awinderpal Singh, whose passport stands suspended.

Satwinder Kaur of Toose village in Ludhiana said she married Arwinderpal Singh in February 2009.

Arwinderpal is the Foreign Student Coordinator at the Medical University now and he was a teacher in India when he married Satwinder, who was a lecturer of political science then.

“I was forced to resign from my government job in 2010, and in 2015, my husband went abroad by taking money from my parents. He came back in August 2016 for my sister’s marriage and then disappeared without informing me. Finally, an FIR was registered against him and my in-laws,” she said.

Another case is that of Palwinder Kaur from Ludhiana, who was married to Shinder Singh, who stays in Bahrain.

“He was already blacklisted for overstay in Bahrain and after coming here, he got another passport with my name added to it.

He was demanding money from my parents to apply for the Canadian visa. Bahrain embassy officials told me that they would deport him if the Indian government asks them to do so,” she said.

Palwainder said suspension of his passport gave her strength to keep fighting.

In another case from Panchkula, a fugitive husband (who is a Australian national), the passports on his Sydney-based parents — mother Paramjit Kumari and father Vinod Kashyap — have been suspended.