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Monday Special
‘Runaway grooms’ of Tamil Nadu
Arup Chanda
Tribune News Service

Chennai, February 18
The “runaway groom” syndrome is not confined to Punjab. A substantial number of NRI Tamils successfully settled all over the globe also suffer from this syndrome.

Like the “sardar sahibs” from the Doaba region in Punjab who come home, get married with a fat dowry and then after flying back abroad, send divorce papers to their wives, the "Annas" of Tamil Nadu are also following suit.

But they are certainly more intelligent and innovative than our “turbanators” and there is no Lok Bhalai Party here headed by former Union Minister Balwant Singh Ramoowalia. And it has heightened the plight of the "left in lurch brides".

The only option for these hapless women is the Tamil Nadu State Legal Services Authority (TNSLSA). And here they come in hordes.

Meena had to watch her husband bleed daily, but it was she who suffered instead of him. “He used to slash his wrists daily to insist that I abort the foetus I was carrying. The more I refused, the more he cut himself,” she recalls with a shudder.

“Ours was a love marriage. But immediately after the marriage, my husband changed his mind and started behaving as if he wanted to escape my clutches,” Meena said with tears. He even tore the photographs taken during marriage leaving Meena with no documentary evidence.

Meena had married Gokuldoss in May 1983 at Vadapazhani Murugan Temple here. However, within a few years, her husband who went to Delhi for a job married another woman and flew to the USA where he settled down with his second wife.

Complaining that he had also taken away her jewellery and money, Meena wanted the TNSLSA to intervene.

Abandoned and frightened, Meena, 41-year-old woman from Tanjore, knocked on the doors of the TNSLSA hoping for a miracle.

It did happen.

The case of Meena, who made a representation to the TNSLSA about her absconding husband Gokuldoss, took a new turn last year with the arrest of his second wife in Uttar Pradesh. Gokuldoss and his second wife had come to India for a brief holiday. However, he escaped police clutches as he had flown out to the USA.

This came in the wake of a directive from the Madras High Court to the TNSLSA to act on Meena’s complaint fast and help her obtain justice. The second wife, Udaya, was arrested at Noida by a women police team from here that went to Uttar Pradesh after registering an FIR on Meena’s complaint.

But this is not a solitary case in Tamil Nadu.

There are more women like her whose husbands have run away, leaving their wives in the lurch. Their only hope now is the TNSLSA.

The authority has been providing legal aid to the poor and needy for over two decades. But it has been confronting with this sort of complaints in the recent times.

The number of such complaints is on the rise compared to previous years.

The process of tracing such absconding husbands seems to be difficult as they could have changed names and married again.

‘’I got married in 1983 and my husband Kannan went absconding within a few years. Later I came to know that he was in the USA and living with another woman. But I could not trace his address,’’ says another deserted woman Lakshmi with tears.

The story of another complainant, Kavya, who got married in 1994, is also on similar lines. Kavya’s husband Sukumar is now in Singapore married to another woman.

‘’My husband went to Singapore in 1997 after he got a job there. But one fine morning, I received a shocking message from him that he had a second marriage in Singapore and he could not take care of me thereafter,’’ Kavya said in her complaint. Sukumar even stopped speaking to her over phone. Her search for him for over three years has not yielded any result.

The plight of Vijaya, a resident of Minjur, is more pathetic as her husband Karthikeyan abandoned her with her one-year-old girl child. Karthikeyan who got a job in the USA, took his wife and child with him first. Later, he sent them back only to get married again in the USA. When the TNSLSA summoned his relatives for inquiry, they pleaded ignorance about his whereabouts.

With many such women thronging its office, the TNSLSA is now busy tracing the absconding husbands through Passport Offices and Immigration Offices.

The Madras High Court and the TNSLSA have directed the officials to probe the issue from all possible angles to help the victims.

Said a senior official of the TNSLSA, ‘’We have decided to file habeas corpus petition in the high court to trace them. Once their whereabouts are traced, we will lodge bigamy complaints against such persons besides filing cases in the family courts for claiming maintenance amount for the victims.’’

However, the process is not so easy as, according to the complainants, the absconding husbands had changed their names and some had converted to other religions too, the official said.