6 min readMorigaonFeb 5, 2023 02:36 PM IST
First published on: Feb 5, 2023 at 05:00 AM IST
Around 11.30 Saturday morning, the cries outside Laharighat Police Station in Assam’s Morigaon district started getting louder as dozens of women rattled and pushed against its closed gates. Despite police personnel pushing them back, around six of them barged in and threw themselves on the floor at the entrance of the station. The women were relatives of Islam, who was arrested from his home on Friday night on charges of marrying a minor.
Beyond the gate, a woman stood alone with a three-month-old baby swaddled in her arms. Her husband, Hanif, was arrested from their home late Friday night. She says that they married a year and a half ago.
“I am worried about how I’m going to look after my child. My husband worked as a farm labourer. I ran away from home to get married so I don’t have any other support. As of now, I don’t have a single rupee with me,” said the woman, who claims to be 18 years old.
Two days into the Assam government’s crackdown against child marriages, similar scenes have been playing out at police stations across the state — from Dhubri in Lower Assam to Majuli in Upper Assam. As of 6 pm on Saturday, 2,258 people were arrested, with 214 new arrests in the last 24 hours.
Outside the Tamarhat police station in Dhubri on Saturday, as the numbers swelled and tempers rose, police used lathi-charge and teargas to disperse the protesters, mostly women and local residents.
While the question of the impact of these arrests on existing families has been gaining momentum in the state, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said that there is room for “zero sympathy”.
“There is zero sympathy in these matters. After a young girl is married and goes through… I will have to call it rape… have we thought of the suffering the girl goes through? In order to save lakhs of girls from this situation in the future, one generation will have to suffer. There is no question of sympathy here… Child marriage has to stop in Assam and action against it will continue. I have told District Collectors that if anyone has financial troubles because their husbands are in jail, the government can look into it,” he said, adding that the drive will continue until the next Assembly election, in 2026.
After a rather muted response on Day 1, leaders of Opposition parties began voicing their criticism of the government’s crackdown, primarily against the retrospective action on marriages that took place some years ago.
Accusing the government of “setting fire to thousands of families”, Assam Trinamool Congress President Ripun Bora said, “There is a law against child marriage and it hasn’t been created today or yesterday. I want to ask the Chief Minister, why was the government sleeping all these years? Now, today, all of a sudden, he is arresting thousands of people. People should be caught from the time that they violate the law. But the people who were married 1.5 or two years back… Even if they were children when they got married, now they are now running a happy family,” he said.
AIUDF spokesperson Karim Uddin Barbhuyan issued a similar statement. “The law against child marriage was passed long ago and the fact that a huge number of these marriages took place despite that indicates that the government didn’t exercise the law and take initiative or action to create awareness and stop it in the first place. Now Assam Police is resorting to diversion tactics by harassing illiterate people from economically weak background in the name of action against child marriage…,” he said.
Calling the government drive a “PR exercise”, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi said, “In Assam, people have completely rejected the initiative of Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to crack down on child marriage. It seems police are instructed to investigate cases that are decades old without proper inquiry or adherence to procedure. It’s a farce.”
Meanwhile, a young mother stood outside Morigaon’s Laharighat police station with her husband Gunadhar’s Aadhaar card and voter ID. She said her marriage was arranged by her elder sister when they lost their parents to illness three years ago. A relative stood next to her, carrying her nine-month-old baby.
“I look after the baby myself and my whole day revolves around that. My in-laws are old… My husband works in the fields and I’m completely dependent on him. I haven’t studied beyond Class 4 so I don’t know anything about legal help either,” she said, adding she is 18 now.
Miguel Das Queah, founder of UTSAH, a non-profit working on child protection and who is working closely with police on tackling child marriages, said such a drive would never be “a very pleasant process”. “This is why the state has to be ready with an alternative with necessary rehabilitation effort. Of course, this is much easier to address in immediate cases. When they have children now and the breadwinning member is arrested, there will be distress, that is inevitable. But most will also be out on bail soon. The complexity will come out when POCSO is applied in these cases,” he said, adding, “The punitive action is to send out a message, it is limited to that.”
Chief Minister Sarma had earlier said that the government would work on bringing those affected by the crackdown under welfare schemes such as the Orunodoi financial assistance programme for vulnerable women.
“We will create a rehabilitation fund for the victims. The Assam government and the Central government have various poverty alleviation schemes. We will try to bring the victims back to the education system… Many of these things will not start tomorrow but we will have a new budget and we will institutionalise everything,” he had said.
Police arrest men allegedly involved in child marriages, during Assam government's statewide crackdown on child marriages, in Guwahati, Friday (PTI) 
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