Parveen Kumari makes several trips to the police station every week in Jalandhar, a city in the north Indian state of Punjab, to check on the progress of her complaint against her Australian husband of nine years.
Ms Kumari married Ajay Kumar in India in 2009 when he was an international student in Brisbane. Between then and now, her husband managed to legally divorce her - unbeknown to her, again registered their marriage and then once again unsuccessfully tried to divorce her in an Australian court, while she lived with her husband’s parents in India.
In February last year, her husband withdrew sponsorship for Ms Kumari and their daughter’s Australian visas. 
In her complaint to the Australian Federal Police, she alleges that her husband procured a fraudulent divorce decree from an Indian court in October 2010 without her consent or knowledge, and married an Australian citizen in order to get a permanent visa.
Parveen Kumari and Ajay Kumar Source: Supplied
Ms Kumari says she came to know of this only when her husband asked to solemnise their marriage again and register it with the sub-registrar’s office in April 2016 in India.
“I asked him why we had to do this again since, he said it was necessary in order to apply for me and my daughter’s visas,” she told SBS Punjabi.
Mr Kumar denies he procured the divorce decree by fraudulent means.
Parveen Kumari and her daughter. Source: Supplied
“It was, in fact, she who sent me the divorce papers,” he says.
Indian police authorities have charged Mr Kumar for alleged fraud and offences relating to dowry harassment on the basis of Ms Kumari’s complaint. 
After Mr Kumar returned to Australia in 2016, he withdrew his support for the visa applications, voiding any chances of Ms Kumari and their 7-year-old daughter of coming to Australia. Their visa applications were subsequently rejected.
An Indian visually impaired bridal couple participate in Hindu rituals during a mass marriage at the Andh Kanya Praksh Gruh in Ahmedabad. Source: AFP
He also filed a divorce application in the Family Court of Western Australia in Perth in May 2017 - that was later discontinued.
Mr Kumar says he never wanted to live with Ms Kumari and remarried her because of their daughter.
“I wanted to give us another chance and we travelled to Bali together. But I found that we were not compatible at all,” he says.
In her complaint to authorities in India, Ms Kumari alleges that her husband’s parents mistreated her and forced her out of their house along with her daughter.
Ms Kumari is now seeking criminal proceedings against her husband and his parents.
SBS Punjabi has contacted the Australian Federal Police.
Thousands of women abandoned by NRI grooms
There are thousands of women across Punjab and Gujarat who are married to men living in developed countries, such as Australia, the UK, Canada and the US, but haven’t seen their husbands after their honeymoons. These women are known as abandoned NRI wives.
According to data collected by the non-governmental organisation, , Punjab is home to more than 25,000 such women and Gujarat has over 12,000 abandoned NRI brides.
Recent Indian government statistics show that India’s External Affairs Ministry received 3,328 distress calls from NRI women between January 1, 2015, and November 30, 2017 - making that approximately one distressed woman calling every eight hours.
It’s not easy for these women to get justice.
A former chairperson of Punjab Women Commission, Paramjit Kaur Landran told the Hindustan Times that abandoned wives can “grow old” fighting for justice.
