New Delhi: The ongoing campaign against child marriage has been intensified in the state of Assam. Thousands of people marrying minor girls are being put in jails. Police are issuing notices to their parents. More strict measures are being taken by the authorities. Now the relatives attending the marriage of minor girls are also being sent to jail. According to sources, recently, a person named Zaheer has been arrested for attending his relative’s wedding ceremony.
Families of those detained have started protests against the crackdown ordered by Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Meanwhile, women’s rights activists are divided over the decision taken by the government to tackle the widespread practice. Indian law prohibits the marriage of women below 18 and of men under 21. However, according to a UNICEF report released in 2020 India has 223 million child brides — a third of the global total.
According to a report, most of the arrests are in predominantly Muslim districts. Opposition parties accuse Sarma, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of religious bias.
Even women’s rights activists claimed that Sarma’s “iron fist” approach will do more harm to women than good. Calling the arrests in Assam an injustice to women, Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research in New Delhi, says they will be left without financial support. Ms Kumari called the drive, without law enforcement, a futile exercise that is unlikely to help women or bring about any change in the society.
