Chandigarh: In 2018, when Balwinder Singh, a farmer from Dhanaula village in Punjab’s Barnala district realised that the five acres of land he owned were not enough to give his son Lovepreet a secure future, he considered sending the young man to settle in Canada.
This was not a startling thought. In the last few decades, people from Punjab have been making their way in large numbers to countries like Canada, the USA and Australia, creating a huge Punjabi diaspora abroad.
But Lovepreet had only passed his higher secondary exams and did not have the English language skills and other requisite qualifications to apply for a student visa to Canada.
So the family worked out an alternative arrangement. In the nearby village of Khudi Kalan, they found a girl to marry Lovepreet. Beant Kaur was a distant relative and had all the necessary qualifications – including a high score in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), an international standardised test of English language proficiency for non-native English speakers – needed to easily get a student visa for Canada. The student visa would lead to a work permit for the young woman and then a spouse visa would allow Lovepreet to move to Canada as well. After that, Beant and Lovepreet could separate or divorce if they wanted to.
The arrangement began well. Lovepreet’s family provided close to Rs. 25 lakh to send Beant abroad and Beant left for Ontario on August 19, 2018, to study computer science. A year later, she returned to Barnala to marry Lovepreet on August 7. Ten days later, she departed for Ontario again, promising Lovepreet that she would soon send for him.
But within weeks of her return to Canada, Beant started avoiding Lovepreet’s messages. As time passed, Lovepreet began to realise that she had no intention of keeping her side of the bargain. Then, early on the morning of June 23, 2021, Lovepreet died under mysterious circumstances, his body found in the family’s fields, leaving his parents wondering if the failure of the arrangement with Beant had led the young man to take his own life.
The marriage route
Many Punjabi men find it difficult to clear the IELTS exam, without which they have no chance of applying to international universities. So it has become a more or less routine practice, if they are determined to settle abroad, for them to enter into ‘contract marriages’ with young women who have all the necessary qualifications for admission to Western universities. This has not only created a law and order problem for Punjab but has also become another route to bypassing the legal provisions for emigration to foreign countries.
Both Lovepreet’s and Beant’s families claim that the marriage of the two young people was not contractual. Lovepreet’s uncle, Paramjeet Singh, in a conversation over the phone with The Wire, also denied that the marriage was fake. But he acknowledged that the idea behind it was to ensure that Lovepreet got to settle abroad.
“It was not wrong. Every parent wants their child to be well settled. With just five acres of land, Lovepreet had no future here. But the girl cheated Lovepreet after she settled abroad and this forced him to die by suicide,” alleged Paramjeet.
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Paramjit became certain that Lovepreet had died by suicide when, a few days after the young man’s death, the family began scanning the messaging apps on Lovepreet’s phone.
“There were long WhatsApp chats between Lovepreet and Beant which showed that Beant Kaur had had no intention to send a spouse visa for Lovepreet,” said Paramjeet. “This sent him into a depression and led him to end his life.”
Lovepreet’s parents wanted a first information report (FIR) filed against Beant Kaur. “But when the police delayed the procedure, the family leaked the WhatsApp conversations between Lovepreet and Beant to the media. This later went viral on various social media platforms,” said Paramjeet.
After that, Beant, who had told the media that she was innocent, began to be vilified on social media. Manisha Gulati, the Punjab State Women’s Commission chairperson, met Lovepreet’s family in Dhanaula and assured them of justice. The police were pressured to register an FIR against Beant and the young woman was booked on July 27 on a cheating charge. Lovepreet’s family also began pushing the police to add the charge of abetment of suicide to the FIR against Beant.
Manisha Gulati, Punjab State Women’s Commission Chairperson. Source: Facebook/ManishaGulatiOfficial
“We demand that the police charge the girl for abetment to suicide and start the process for her extradition from Canada to face a trial in India,” said Paramjeet. “We met the Barnala superintendent of police on Monday and he assured us that the police would act if Lovepreet’s viscera report showed the possibility of suicide.”
3 years, 186 complaints
According to the non-resident Indians (NRI) wing of the Punjab Police, there have been as many as 186 complaints with regard to contract marriages in the state since 2019, each claiming that the woman cheated the man after she went abroad. Based on these complaints, 30 FIRs have been registered so far.
But many contract marriage complaints end in a compromise between the parties concerned, as happened with Jaswinder Dhaliwal, a young man from Barnala, who in 2020 married a woman with suitable IELTS qualifications with the aim to settle in Canada, but was instead cheated like Lovepreet before him.
“My family spent nearly Rs. 25 lakh to send the girl to Canada. But a few months later, she began ignoring me and stopped taking my calls,” Jaswinder told The Wire. “When I spoke to the girl’s father, he showed no interest in the matter. Then the girl’s family filed a false complaint of harassment against us and in return, we filed a case of fraud against them. In the end, a compromise was reached and the girl’s family returned Rs. 9 lakh that they had received from my family.”
The compromise between the two families was reached this February and a divorce between Jaswinder and his wife is now pending in the family court.
Jaswinder had agreed to a contract marriage because he could see no other way to achieve his aim to settle abroad. “To qualify for admission in a Canadian university, you need a 6.5 band in the IELTS exam overall,” he explained. “But despite repeated attempts at the exam, many men fail to qualify in the range that Canadian authorities demand. Then their families begin to explore other ways to send their kids abroad, which often leads to different problems.”
Desperate to leave
Contract marriage frauds arise because of a certain desperation among the young people of Punjab to settle elsewhere in the world.
According to Ranjit Singh Ghuman, professor of economics at the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, Chandigarh, this desperation to move abroad is due to the lack of job opportunities in the state.
“Punjab could not be developed as an economic hub like other states of India. Therefore the youth in Punjab do not have the kind of job and business opportunities they aspire to,” said Ranjit Singh. “When they hear the success stories of super rich Punjabis settled abroad, they become naturally inclined towards finding ways, whether legal or illegal, to settle abroad.”
The urge of Punjabis to migrate has its roots in colonial history, according to a 2013 study by Viresh Kumar Bhawra, the former director general of police in Punjab, titled Migration from India to the EU: Evidence from the Punjab. The study showed that a regular pattern of migration from Punjab began with the induction of Sikhs into the Indian Army after the British annexation of Punjab in 1849.
Sikh soldiers were taken to distant places under the British Empire. The soldiers who returned brought back stories about foreign lands that led enterprising young men to travel to the British colonies to seek their fortunes, the study pointed out.
Over the years, as borders around the world tightened, many of the emigrations from Punjab have been illegal. There are several ways to illegally enter foreign countries. One is the well-known ‘donkey system’, in which migrants enter the country they are aiming for via multiple stops in other countries. This is a popular but dangerous method that has already killed many young Punjabis in the jungles of Mexico as they tried to cross the US border illegally.
The IELTS contract marriage is now another way to bypass the legal emigration system. The couple is legally married before one spouse sets off to the target foreign country where, after some time, the other spouse is legally permitted to enter.
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Although it is possible that IELTS coaching centres, travel agents or immigration firms are involved in fixing contract marriage deals, there is no evidence so far that this is a large-scale racket. Instead, marriage contracts are usually arranged via personal contacts and are also openly called for in matrimonial advertisements in Punjabi newspapers.
For example, a recent matrimonial advertisement in a Punjabi language newspaper said, “A bride is needed with a 6 band IELTS score, father in government job (sic)”.
Another advertisement said, “Needed a girl willing to settle abroad. The expenses will be borne by the boy’s family (sic)”.
Yet another matrimonial advertisement said, “IELTS girl is needed, the boy is Jatt, we will spend the money (sic)”.
No solution
Jaswinder Dhaliwal, who now runs a small, informal support group for other men in the same situation as he had been, has become something of an expert on contract marriages.
“Whenever we hear of a new case of contract marriage fraud, we help the boy in the police case and other legal procedures,” he told The Wire. “Before the news of Lovepreet’s case went viral, my group had 10-12 members. Now we have more than 60 members.”
The weddings of couples involved in contract marriages are generally low-key affairs, Jaswinder told The Wire. “Only a handful of people attend. After the wedding, the girl does not stay with the boy’s family,” he said. “Meanwhile, the boy’s family arranges to send the girl abroad. If everything goes well, the boy gets the spouse visa and the couple later file for a divorce.”
Not all failures of contract marriages can be attributed to deliberate fraud, said Jaswinder. “Perhaps some of the girls fall into serious relationships when they are abroad. Then their so-called marriages become an embarrassment to them. For example, Lovepreet’s wife had been in a relationship with someone else,” he said.
But even when cases of fraud are filed, Jaswinder added, the police and court procedures are lengthy and tedious. “Since the repatriation of the girl in question is almost impossible, our only legal remedy is to get her Indian passport revoked after declaring her proclaimed [a] offender during the trial,” he said.
It is difficult to stop a practice like contract marriages in a country where arranged marriages are the norm. The only suggestion offered by Amardeep Singh Rai, Punjab’s additional director general of police in charge of NRI affairs, is to spread awareness of the dangers of illegal immigration. The state issues advisories from time to time asking people not to indulge in the use of illegal means to settle abroad, Rai told The Wire.
“The Punjab government has also created a foreign placement and foreign study centre where we provide online guidance to students on how they can migrate abroad and get the right studies and jobs. This is a government initiative to discourage the practice of illegal settlement in overseas countries,” added Rai.
Even Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, could not offer a better solution to this problem than to point out that aspiring immigrants to Canada must protect themselves from fraud.
Trudeau said this at a media briefing in Canada last month in response to a letter from Manisha Gulati, the Punjab State Women’s Commission chairperson, which had raised the issue of the exploitation of Punjabi youth in the name of Canadian citizenship and urged Trudeau to take rapid and stringent action to stop this exploitation and bring the culprits to justice.
“There are legitimate immigration consultants who can help you with the processes but there are too many people who are making promises to vulnerable people that they simply cannot back up. Again, the government of Canada has taken a number of steps to crack down on fraudulent immigration consultants,” Trudeau had said at the briefing.
He had added, “That’s why I would encourage everyone to consult the official government of Canada website for information on how to protect themselves from fraud extortionists and criminals who will try and take your money and not deliver you the promise of coming to Canada.”
Effect on the state
Whether migration from Punjab to foreign countries is legal or illegal, migration results in major economic losses for the state, Ranjit Singh told The Wire.
“Punjab loses the benefit of its population and demographic dividend. Besides, a lot of money goes abroad to foreign universities in the shape of fees and other expenditure,” he said.
Still, illegal emigration has a worse effect on Punjab than legal emigration, he added. “If the emigration is legal, there is a chance for the state to get foreign remittances from its overseas residents. But it takes years for illegal immigrants to get the legal status to stay and legally earn money. And if they are arrested and deported back to Punjab, it ends up creating a host of social and economic problems for the state,” he said.
According to former sociology professor Manjit Singh, several studies have shown that students and legal emigrants spend between Rs. 20,000 – 30,000 crores every year to study or settle abroad. This money, he pointed out, could help strengthen the local economy. The fact that it goes overseas instead, he added, shows a failure on the part of the state to create an environment where young people are inspired to remain and help grow the economy.
“In Punjab, there is a dearth of employment,” said Manjit Singh. “There is no quality education as well. Business opportunities are limited. Besides, parents are worried that their children will fall into drug addiction if they remain here. That is why many Punjabis want to settle abroad by any means possible. ”
He added: “If people get the right opportunities at their doorstep, this kind of mad rush to settle abroad will no longer exist.”