What to know before a marriage is arranged across two countries.
This page exists because of a documented pattern, not a hypothetical one. Read it before anything is agreed, and share it with whoever in your family is doing the arranging.
What this usually looks like
A marriage is arranged and solemnised in Punjab. The groom lives abroad, or says he does. He returns overseas soon after the wedding, promising to arrange a spouse visa or a sponsorship.
The paperwork does not arrive. Calls become less frequent. The family abroad stops answering. Sometimes there is a demand for more money first, framed as immigration costs, a lawyer, or a fee.
Punjab’s NRI wing has over 30,000 pending cases of this kind despite compulsory NRI marriage registration since 2012. It is not rare and it is not your fault if it happens to you.
NRI marriage registration is compulsory
A marriage where one party is an NRI must be registered under the Punjab Compulsory Registration of Marriage Act. Registration creates a record that exists independently of either family.
Register it. A marriage nobody recorded is a marriage that is harder to prove later, and proving it is the first thing every route to help asks for.
Before any ceremony
Verify residency and marital status independently. Ask to see documents yourself, and have somebody you trust look at them. A photograph of a document is not a document.
Never send money. There is no legitimate reason for somebody you are considering marrying to need money from your family before the wedding.
Never send identity documents, passport scans or visa copies to somebody you have not met.
Keep records from the beginning: messages, promises made, photographs, names, dates, and the names of anybody who introduced you. This is the evidence every route to help will ask for, and it is much harder to assemble afterwards.
Where to get help
NRI Police Wing, Punjab Police. They handle exactly this and have done for years. Approach them through the district NRI police station or the Punjab Police helpline.
NRI Sabha Punjab, which mediates and can direct you to the right authority.
The Ministry of External Affairs runs distress mechanisms for Indian women married to NRIs, including through Indian missions abroad if you are already outside India.
The Regional Passport Office can be asked to look at a passport where a court has ordered it.
A lawyer in Punjab who has handled NRI marriage cases before. This is a specialist area and general family law practice is not the same thing.
The rules on IkkoPind
- Demanding, offering or discussing dowry is prohibited on IkkoPind and is grounds for removal. Dowry is illegal in India under the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961. That includes cash, gold, vehicles, property, wedding expenses framed as a contribution, and "what the family will give". If somebody raises it with you, report it.
- Never send money to somebody you have met here. Anybody asking is committing a fraud, whatever the reason sounds like.
- Never send identity documents, a passport scan or a visa copy to a stranger.
- Nobody has to move a conversation to WhatsApp, and being pressed to is a signal worth reporting.
- One profile per person, describing that person. Not a relative, not on behalf of somebody who has not agreed.
- Say what is true about where you intend to live, your residency and your marital status. Every one of those is checkable by the other family, and being caught is the least of what happens next.
About photographs
Anyone you release photos to can save them. IkkoPind cannot stop that and does not claim to. What we do is stamp each image with a code identifying who it was shown to, so a photo that turns up elsewhere can be traced back. Release them to somebody you have decided to trust, not to everybody who asks.