Outcast Wives Inside Out

Not a day had come in my life where you really feel that

Breaking the wall of silence - the wives separated

from their husbands, shunned by their communities

The moment their daughter has been left by her husband,

The impact for women who are left, who have been abandoned,

It's leaving them almost in chains within their society.

With thousands of brides branded as outcasts,

we reveal the injustices and indignities many

They marry us, they bring us over, then they treat us like a dirty rag.

She's embarking on an extraordinary personal mission to find

I am feeling a bit nervous as well as emotional,

as I have not seen this man since one and a half years.

I don't know how he will react when he sees me.

She's used up all her savings and put her teaching career on hold

to come to London and get out of a marriage in which

I felt that my whole world has been disturbed or shaken and shattered.

It was an arranged marriage and before exchanging vows

she had only ever met him for one single hour.

In India the arranged marriage is a really common concept, so...

Vikram had come to my place prior to the marriage was finalised,

prior one week before the wedding and it was just a normal chat.

I mean, what's your likes and your dislikes?

And what he has been doing in London.

You're meeting a stranger for the first time, and he's

going to be a husband, so at the back of the mind...

You are nervous, you are excited, you are attracted towards him.

Ritu insists she did not feel pressured into the marriage,

but the wedding took place just 48 hours after they had met.

We literally had one day, me and my family and my relatives,

to prepare the wedding as much as we could.

We arranged everything, the temple where we'd

The wedding night, was it what you hoped?

Vikram had a flight early in the morning,

We did not even spend a night together.

After returning to the UK, he assured Ritu that he would

But within four months, the relationship became strained

and Ritu's visa application, which required her husband's

She now wants a divorce, but in India it is extremely

difficult to divorce an absent spouse.

She feels trapped in a meaningless marriage to a man she barely knows

Sometimes I have to really curse myself that why did

I could have asked him not to get married so soon.

Not a day had come in my life where you really feel that

There are believed to be tens of thousands of women

Many are Brides from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh,

who claim they have been cast aside, abandoned, by their

For many of these wives, abandonment is just the final

incident in a relationship that was characterised

with abuse and deceit from even before the wedding.

Throughout their marriage, many of these women are exploited

Some are forced into domestic slavery.

Others are even duped into giving up their children.

We are looking at thousands of women, so this is not

We're only beginning to touch and scratch

But we see is a continuum of sexual violence that

they have been subjected to, physical, sexual, financial,

emotional abuse and the end process is often abandonment.

Kulwant was brought to the UK from India by her British national

She says that as well as being treated as a domestic

slave, her husband subjected her to violence every day.

In desperation, Kulwant says she eventually picked

That was 18 months ago and ever since, her husband has refused

Along with her son, Kulwant now lives in temporary accommodation

and with the help of a charity she's trying to rebuild her life.

I have travelled from London to Punjab, the north of India ?

it's the same journey that every year hundreds of Indian British

At a secret location in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab,

a special meeting for women is being held.

Most of the women here are married to men from abroad and,

according to the head of the charity who organised this event,

More and more girls are in such a big mess.

I see a lot of beautiful educated women, they are in a mess.

In this region alone, the local authority estimates

that there are well over 15,000 abandoned wives.

Their husbands come from all over the world, but British men

are thought to account for over one-third of these cases

and for many of these grooms the motivation is not

Usually, it's like this - he comes here and he asks

for massive money from the dowry and they marry, the girls' parents

give the dowry, he took the money, he enjoys his honeymoon months

Despite being outlawed since 1961, in India it is customary

for the bride's family to give money or gifts to the groom prior

These dowries often amount to tens of thousands of pounds

A lot of women say that well after the marriage,

dowry demands continue, and, ultimately, when they cannot

meet dowry demands, they are abandoned.

In a rural village on the outskirts of Punjab, Kalmajit married a man

To pay for the dowry and the wedding, her father

scraped together almost all of his life savings.

Within days of accepting his hand in marriage, Kamaljit's

says her husband started complaining about the dowry.

Eventually, says Kalmajit, her husband abandoned her

She claims he left her even though she was pregnant.

Just a few weeks later, Kalmajit's daughter died,

but even then she says her husband did not contact her.

Many women like Kalmajit still desperately hope to revive

marriages with husbands who have left them, because the alternative

Life as an abandoned woman in India means

living as an outcast, an outcast wife.

The impact for women who are left, who are being abandoned,

is quite devastating, because it can affect

It can affect the way the community view her.

And the way they view their families as well.

It can affect, if she has children, how the children are seen,

how the children are raised, and if you come from very poor

environments, very poor families, then actually what that is doing

is adding additional pressure to the family and a sort

She feels she has no value and society makes it

And there have been hundreds of examples where parents

Ten days after arriving in London, Ritu's had no success

in tracking down her husband, so she's come to a woman's group,

So, basically to sum it up, he doesn't want to know you.

Literally, you just want to end the relationship, but trying to find

the reason behind it, but at the end of the day you can't

go back, you can't move forward, you are stuck, stagnant.

That's a very horrible position to be in.

I think you cannot ever get answers to the questions

you are looking for, because from what you said you can't

If she finds him, Ritu wants to ask her husband for a divorce.

But most wives left in India never get the opportunity to do this.

UK immigration rules prohibit them from entering the country.

She will have problems in serving him in England,

because she cannot come in as a visitor because she has

to disclose she has a husband and she is married to a British

national and once she discloses that she will be asked why aren't

you applying for a spousal visa, and a spousal visa needs

a husband's support, so she is caught in catch 22.

Unable to obtain a divorce via the British courts,

abandoned wives must turn to the Indian judicial system.

Getting a divorce from a spouse who lives abroad is a complex,

Some of the parents here have been trying to get

a resolution for their abandoned daughters for years.

Our legal system is little bit slow, it will take years and years

There are a number of difficulties, of hurdles for each and every step,

and more over these girls don't have is the money to pay for the legal

system, even to go from one station to the other for the documentation

and there is no direct legal system available,

where she could apply as in a domestic

Abandoned wives are not only at the mercy of the courts when it

comes to obtaining a divorce - many face legal difficulties,

if their husbands take their children.

Six years ago, Sonali got married in Pakistan.

Her husband, a British national, arranged for her to come and live

I came here and I was seven months pregnant.

I was thinking everything would be fine and my life would be better

but they treated me like a slave or servant in their house and they

Shortly after she had given birth, Sonali says her husband suggested

a family holiday back in Pakistan to help her recover.

On their second night abroad, he was out with friends but phoned

My husband called me first and said, "I am coming to pick up my son

because a few relatives are coming from Karachi, the city in Pakistan,

He just took my son from me and I don't know why

I was feeling scared that time, I don't know, but I just

called him again and again, but suddenly his phone

Eventually, Sonali realised her husband had been

He had taken her three-month old baby and left the country.

I was thinking there is no reason to live.

Most of the time I start talking with his clothes.

When I went to sleep in the night, I put his clothes with my pillow

and no-one take him, because he is my son

My mother is like, "No this is not your son,

Abandoned in Pakistan, Sonali had no clue how

she would access legal help to get her son back

until she came across the website of a UK based charity.

If there are children involved, there are some legal remedies

available, not easy, but there are.

Fortunately, that is a situation which the judiciary have woken up

to, there has been case developments that allow women even if they're

abandoned and abroad to bring proceedings here.

Southall Black Sisters secured a specialist family lawyer,

who made the child a ward of court and arranged for Sonali

to return to the UK, where her case was heard in the High

The High Court has said, because it's a British national

child, and the best interest of the child are a paramount

that the force of the law should and could be used,

so that the child could be reunited with his mother,

and the husband was in effect, ordered to support her immigration

application to allow her to come back to the UK.

Sonali has been granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK under

It means she will not have to return to Pakistan,

where abandoned wives and their children

Six weeks on, and Ritu still has not found her husband.

Her time in London is running out, but she's found a charity that

There are only a handful of charities that specifically

They have recently been overwhelmed with new cases,

triggering calls for more systematic help from Governments and legal

What we want to see is a better harmonisation of law,

so that a woman can be granted a divorce in one country and have it

A woman can be granted a maintenance order in one country and have it

recognised in another, but also that governments

and state agencies cooperate so if a woman is denied a right

by sending her to another country, she is not stuck

Ritu has finally found an address for her estranged husband.

She decides that she wants to go there today.

I don't know how Vikram will react to it and I don't know how

I just want to know why my husband has abandon me from this marriage,

why doesn't he let go of the relationship.

So I really hope I get my answers today.

This is the first time Ritu will see her husband in over

eighteen months and due to the sensitivity of the situation,

It was really sad that Vikram did not even recognise me.

He doesn't want to answer any of my questions.

In fact, the meeting was tense and her husband called the police.

I spoke to the police, they said, "You need to go to India

Now if the police can't help me, where will I go?

I was expecting that it will be worth coming here,

Ritu's husband denied all of her claims.

There are no second chances for her to speak to him in the UK.

Her flight back to India leaves tomorrow and she

Unable to secure a divorce from their British husbands,

many south Asian wives resign themselves to a life of injustice.

A life where their chances of meeting another partner,

of having a level of respect in their communities, are diminished.

Yet their British husbands face no such cultural barriers.

They are free to continue their lives as they wish.

She is departing without securing a divorce, but with hope and faith

that she will be able move forward with her life.

When I was getting the blessings, you feel that inner strength in you,

and you feel so positive, the vibrations around

you and you just think, "Yes, things are going to work out,"

and I hope with the grace of God, that I just get what I want.

To say there is a mixed bag of weather on offer this afternoon

would be underplaying the case. When this picture was taken by our

Weather Watchers, you notice how threatening some of the cloud