By Amar Raj Naharki
Tanahun, Dec. 27:

A rough translation of a “vehicle poem” reads:
Spend some days in the village,
And then some days in the town.
But don’t go abroad,
Or else your wife will look around.

This piece of “poetry” is lewd and objectionable, as “vehicle poems” often tend to be. But it hit too close to home for Bikas Nepali (name changed) of Galwubesi, Vyas Municipality – 1.
Nepali toiled in the Gulf for 15 years to give his two children a good education and support his family. Work was hard and every day he used to dream of returning home and spending the rest of his days in the loving presence of his wife and watching his children grow up. To make life more convenient, he even built a home for him and his spouse near Damauli. This house was registered in the wife’s name but unfortunately it was this very home that his wife sold to run away with her lover.
“My neighbours and relatives had told me that she was acting suspiciously. But never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that my wife would betray me like this, especially considering the fact that ours was a love marriage,” Nepali said. “So, when I heard that my wife sold our house and eloped with another man, I felt like someone pushed me off a cliff.”
After the incident, Nepali came to Nepal and lodged a complaint, informed Sujata Karki, acting head of the Women, Children and Senior Citizens Service Centre operated by the District Police Office. “The wife allegedly went missing after selling the house for Rs. 8 million. Nepali asked the police to find her,” Karki told The Rising Nepal. “Two years later, we found out that she had married another man and settled in Kathmandu. Now, a case has been filed in the court to recover the losses.”
“She sold the house by abusing her right to sell the property in her name,” Karki said, explaining, “Under the current law, both husband and wife need to consent to sell the house and are also required to disclose the source of money used to build the house.”
This has reduced the risk to immovable property but the risk to moveable property like cash and jewellery remains.
A few years ago, a woman, also from Galwubesi, eloped with a man with millions of rupees in cash and kind. The woman was the wife of a man who asked to only be identified by his last name Adhikari. “I had a lot of ancestral land but I went abroad thinking it will be easy to earn money there,” Adhikari said. “I had to return after I found out that my wife made off with Rs. 9 million. I have since found out who she ran away with but don’t know where they are or what they are doing.”
To compensate for the losses, Adhikari went abroad for work one more time but soon came back. These days, he runs a business at home.
The story repeats itself in Bandipur Rural Municipality – 5 where a 30-year-old man with the last name Bhujel claims that his wife made off with Rs. 500,000 in money and jewellery and married another man. “I worked in the searing 50-degree heat of Saudi Arabia to keep her happy. But instead…,” Bhujel was unable to complete his sentence. “I understand that she left me but how could she leave our daughter?” he questioned.
Another man in Vyas Municipality – 2 discovered that his wife was seeing somebody else behind his back, but only after losing Rs. 1.5 million he had earned by working in Qatar for four years. “She started leaving the house for days on end to be with a stranger,” he said, mentioning that the issue used to cause a lot of quarrels at home.
The man and his partner ultimately decided to separate and are in the final stage of their divorce. “The sweat I shed in Qatar has gone completely to waste,” he lamented.
The aforementioned men and their stories represent a tragic trend developing in our society of wives eloping while the husbands toil in foreign countries. In Tanahun alone, 117 husbands have lodged complaints against their wives in the last three years, according to the Women, Children and Senior Citizens Service Centre.
The police say that such cases of wives disappearing with money and property while their husbands are out of the country have been increasing. In the fiscal year 2018/19, 40 husbands lodged complaints with the service centre. In the fiscal year 2019/20, that number went up to 55. And 22 men have come forward already with similar incidents in the first five months of the ongoing fiscal year.
Most of the decamping wives have been caught, the centre said.
“We use their call details, SIM cards or their social media activity to track them,” Karki shared. “We are seeing an increasing number of men returning from foreign employment only to find their wives missing and the money gone,” she said.