Punjab woman claims husband filed for divorce in Canada using forged documents

Lawyer and women’s activist Daljit Kaur (right) is seen in this file photo with women and family members who arrived in Ludhiana, Punjab to tell their stories of marital fraud to Canadian newspapers the Vancouver Province and Calgary Herald. On Jan. 28, 2013, a married woman from Ludhiana claims her husband from Toronto filed for divorce in Canada using forged documents. Ted Rhodes/Postmedia News

Ludhiana, Jan 28 (IANS) A woman has filed a complaint with the police here alleging that her NRI (Non-Resident Indian) husband got a divorce from her in a Canadian court by using forged documents while she was pursuing a case of dowry harassment against him and her in-laws in India, police said Monday.

“Jasdip Singh Sekhon, a divorced man, promised Charanjit Kaur (complainant) that he would take her to Canada. But he left her at his parents’ house before leaving a month after the wedding. Later, Charanjit’s in-laws began harassing her for dowry,” a senior police official here said.

Fed up with the harassment, Charanjit filed a dowry harassment case against her husband and in-laws in a local court here. However, later she received a communication from Canada that she and Jasdip have been granted divorce by a court of that country.

“I did not even know that a divorce case was filed in a Canadian court. It came as a shock to me and my parents. On inquiry, we came to know that a man called Sukhvir Singh, a resident of Chet Nagar village in Ludhiana, had filed a fake affidavit seeking divorce on my behalf.

“I did not even receive a court notice, which is mandatory in divorce cases,” Charanjit said.

She added: “We have been duped by Jasdip and his relatives. He has also been declared proclaimed offender by a Ludhiana court in the dowry harassment case in March 2010.”

Police said that Charanjit, who is in her late twenties, is a resident of Kaunke Kalan village in Ludhiana. According to her, Toronto-based Jasdip married her in March 2007.

Ludhiana Police commissioner Ishwar Chandra has ordered an inquiry into the case.

Ludhiana city is around 100 km from Chandigarh, which serves as the capital of Punjab as well as Haryana. Of late, dozens of cases have been reported in Punjab in which NRI men duped women on the pretext of taking them abroad after marrying them.

Tags: Canada, divorce, dowry, harassment, India, NRI