An Indian man has been charged with “exit trafficking” after he allegedly left his wife in India with their newborn baby and cancelled her visa.
ACT Policing allege the 35-year-old man and his wife travelled to India in September 2024 so she could give birth there, and he then told her he was going back to Australia for work but would return for the birth of their child.
But instead he stayed in Australia and in April 2025 allegedly fraudulently cancelled her visa application and blocked her phone number.
His wife managed to re-enter Australia in August, but left their son in India, and in March this year she reported her husband to police because she believed he was planning for them to travel back to India so he could leave her there again.
The man, who has not been named to protect the identity of his wife, was arrested on April 14 and faced the ACT Magistrates Court on Thursday.
His lawyer asked for the case to be adjourned so documents could be finalised, which was granted by the deputy registrar, The Canberra Times reported.
The accused remains on bail and will face court again at a later date.
Exit trafficking carries a maximum sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment and occurs when an offender uses coercion, threats, or deception to organise the exit, or proposed exit, of a victim from Australia.
According Australian Federal Police data released in October last year, reports of “exit trafficking” more than doubled to 75 over the 2024-25 financial year.
A Pakistani man was arrested in Sydney in June after allegedly tricking his wife and Australian-born child into travelling back to Pakistan and stranding them there, while in November 2024 African man Mohamed Ahmed Omer was jailed for four years and six months in Victoria for stranding his foreign national wife in Sudan and trying to cancel her visa after returning with their two children.
In 2021 an Indian man was the first person in Australia to be convicted of an exit trafficking offence, and was jailed for 21-months for forcing a woman and her child to return to India on a one-way flight. She was threatened with murder if she did not comply.
Header image: The man being arrested (ACT Policing).
