Of runaway wives & harassed husbands

There has been a spurt in cases of runaway wives who have slapped criminal cases against

their non-resident Indian (NRI) husbands.

And, often, the men can do little to gain custody of their children.

Though the police in countries such as the US, UK and Canada often press child abduction

charges in such cases, they cannot follow them up in India, as the country has not yet

ratified the 1980 Hague Convention.

"We hope it may be possible for India to ratify this in the near future," said a

spokesperson for the British High Commission in Delhi.

"Since India has not signed the Hague Convention, courts here have not really been enforcing

judgments of foreign courts," said senior advocate Pinky Anand, who represented complainant

V. Ravi Chandran, on whose petition the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to trace his son and

former wife in India.

The Hague Convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction is a multilateral

treaty that provides a speedy method to return a child taken from one member nation to

another.

The convention was drafted to "insure the prompt return of children who have been abducted

from their country of habitual residence or wrongfully retained in a contracting state not

their country of habitual residence". "India has been used as a haven or a refuge where you

could defeat the law. Moreover, dowry laws are peculiar to the Indian legal system," said

Anand. "Hopefully, this judgement would pave the way for foreign judgements to be enforced

in India."

The Canadian High Commission told HT that its "consular officers at the department of

foreign affairs and international trade and in India were currently managing 23 child

custody, child abduction and child welfare cases".

More than 60 such cases have been reported from the US - over a dozen of them in the last

three months alone. "Parental child abduction can cause immense distress to both the child

that has been taken and the family they leave behind," the British High Commission

spokesperson said. "The British government is limited in the assistance it can provide as

decisions concerning custody and country of abode need to be taken by the courts."

The British High Commission said it was aware of 11 cases in the past 12 months involving

British nationals where a parent had either abducted a minor son or daughter to India or

retained him or her after a holiday visit.

"Cases are sometimes filed to blackmail and extort money," said criminal lawyer Tarun

Goomber, citing the example of a man who could not come to India to meet his parents as

arrests warrants had been issued against him after his wife filed a case.