It all begins with an advertisement in the Sunday Matrimonial: “Wanted, a nice-looking, well brought up and competent girl for a green card holder, coming to India only for a week” and ends up with the girl agreeing to the proposal and boasting with pride about her marriage with an NRI. The parents are happy that their beloved daughter is going abroad. The relatives are inquisitive about the lavish wedding and the bright future of the girl overseas.

Although NRI weddings always present ideas for Bollywood blockbusters, but in real life they are not always a memorable bed of roses. Practically two in every ten NRI marriages are phony or end up in a divorce. According to statistics of the National Commission for Women, there are nearly 15,000 women deserted by NRI’s in Punjab only. Gujarat, with a significant NRI populace, also experiences the same crisis. Harpreet Kaur of Gurdaspur got married to Manjit Singh on April 28, 2000. After residing with his bride for two months, he left for California and never came back. After marrying a foreigner, he has been living in the U.S. with a new identity. The in-laws of Harpreet have abandoned her since then. This is just one out of the hundreds of stories reported to the Indian press, in the past few years. Deceit, cheating, bogus promises, quick divorces, desertion, abduction of children and swelling dowry demands are just some of the problems faced by the Indian brides nowadays. In fact, many women still sulk in their villages, waiting for a call from America that never comes. Not only women, but the men are also victims of the same problem. Against the 152 cases recorded of "abandoned wives", the number of cases of "abandoned grooms" is around 700.

NRI families coming from abroad seek a huge price for their ward.  Such marriages, where the main motive is money often end up in divorce. Under the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1956 if both the parties are Hindus at the time of marriage, then the parties have to file divorce in the country of their origin i.e. India. A match-making agency in Kolkata has enthused the court to impede non-resident grooms from divorcing their Indian wives in foreign countries. At least 100 women in West Bengal have registered their demands for the restoration of their marriage that has been canceled by divorce decrees abroad. On an average, 225 women get married to NRIs in the metropolitan cities every year and approximately 25 women out of them are "deserted".

Disturbed by the regular grievances of cheating and desertion suffered by Indian women wedded to the NRI, the Indian government has decided to grant legal aid and counseling to these victims through the Non Governmental Organizations. The government is setting up Overseas Indian Centers in the areas which are inhabited by the Indian population. To begin with, centers are being set up in US, Gulf, Europe, Africa and South East Asia. These centers will offer legal, health and social counseling and will have help lines to redress the grievances of affected women.

The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) has also decided to broadcast the significance of verifying the background of the prospective NRI bridegrooms, their families, their service, marital status, divorce and monetary situation. The Ministry has been receiving complaints regularly from the NGOs functioning abroad, regarding fraudulent marriages, abandonment, cheating and physical brutality suffered by women on the alien soil. The Ministry has proposed that the marriage should not be finalized on phone or through e-mail, agents should not be trusted blindly, fake papers or fake transactions should not be entered into, migration schemes should not be availed to obtain a green card, the wedding should not be performed in a foreign country, regular communication should be maintained with the family, a social marriage ceremony should be conducted and a bank account should be opened for the women in the foreign.

The Committee on Empowerment of Women (2006-2007) established by the government for solving this problem has drawn force from the Supreme Court decision in Smt. Neeraja Saraph vs. Shri Jayant Saraph, and suggested that: a foreign court cannot annul any marriage between an NRI and an Indian, which has taken place in India. Moreover, alimony should be given to the wife by the husband both in India and abroad. The verdict given by the Indian courts may be executed in foreign courts based on the principles of comity and reciprocal agreements as mentioned in Section 4A of the Civil Procedure Code.

Most feminists assert that the NRI men get married in India and then they leave the wife to marry again and get dowry. But, very rarely these newspapers discuss about the large differences in family laws related to child custody, maintenance, alimony, divorce in India and overseas. In India, if someone applies for divorce, it takes 7 years or more to obtain the same unless it is by mutual consent. The young become old by the time they get divorce. The courts do not realize that one partner can hijack this long process to take revenge. Options like retrial are also available which drag the proceedings further. However, the laws in other countries for divorce are quite liberal. A woman married to an NRI must be mentally prepared that the husband can divorce her if he wishes.