An ex-sheriff who was divorced by his wife without his knowledge has asked a judge to scrap the ruling, which was passed while he was on holiday in India.
Scotland’s firs ever Asian advocate, Raj Jandoo, said that he came home from a three-month trip in India to find out that his 49-year-old wife Nerinder Kaur, had been given what is known as a ‘quickie’ divorce.
Mr Jandoo has taken his case to the Court of Session. He plans to have the decree of divorce scrapped, and for him and Kaur to be declared as still being legally married.
Kaur, however, is already remarried, which means that if Mr Jandoo’s case is successful, she may be open to being accused of bigamy. Mr Jandoo, who is 60-years-old, said that he is not interested in continuing his marriage to Kaur, however he said that there are financial matters that the couple must sort out. Mr Jandoo said that the simplified divorce procedure that his wife was granted while he was away was not appropriate to sort these financial matters out.
The judge presiding the case, Lord Woolman, said he was ‘minded’ to grant the request to Mr Jandoo. He said however, that things became complicated because his wife has already remarried. Cancelling the divorce, he says, would leave her in ‘legal limbo’, as she is unable to be married to two men at once.
The judge has, instead, given Mr Jandoo and his ex-wife three months to come to an agreement. Mr Jandoo, who led an inquiry into the way the 1998 murder of Surjit Singh Chhokar in Lanarkshire was handled met his former wife through an online dating agency in 2010, and they married in December 2012.
Shortly before the couple married, Mr Jandoo passed two neighbouring flats which he owned in Edinburgh into Kaur’s name. The flats were worth £180,000 and £56,700 respectively, and Mr Jandoo said that he had transferred these properties as a show of ‘love at commitment’. He insisted that they were not ‘outright gifts’, but part of the matrimonial assets.
Within three months of their wedding, the couple split, and Kaur first applied for a simplified divorce in May 2015, which was refused by a sheriff. Dunfermline sheriff court granted her a divorce in February 2016 while Mr Jandoo was on holiday in India. He said he was unable to challenge the ruling as he was not in the country, and therefore unable to receive letters or emails pertaining to the case.
Lord Woolman, in a written ruling, said that Mr Jandoo suffered ‘despair, distrust and desolation’ following the breakdown of the marriage.
Thompson Civil and Family Law Solicitors are a Glasgow law firm, with an office in Coatbridge, serving customers throughout Scotland. We offer all our clients a service which is high quality and affordable. To speak to a member of our team, call us today on 0141 404 6575, or complete our online enquiry form here.