Morigaon, Assam: On a sunny winter morning on 7 February, Ambiya Khatun stood outside her mud house holding her four-month-old son on her hips. Dressed in a long printed maxi dress, a pink scarf tied around her neck, the petite, feisty young woman was teary-eyed and visibly distressed.
On the evening of 3 February 2023, Rabul Hussain, Khatun’s husband, had been taken into custody as part of the Assam government’s mass crackdown on child marriage, the first of its kind in India.
“We weren’t given any notice. They knocked on the door looking for him, asked us a few questions and then took him away,” said Khatun, who put her age at 18. Hussain was taken to the nearby police station in Laharighat in Morigaon district—about 3 km from their house and 77 km east of Assam’s capital Guwahati.
Two years ago, Khatun, then 16 and a standard 9 student, had fallen in love with Hussain, then 28 and from the same village. They ran away from home to start a family, she said. Now, her husband’s arrest has left her bereft and stunned.
“I will kill myself and my son if they don’t release him,” said Khatun. “What future do the two of us have without him?” She added that she continued her studies after marriage, with her husband taking her to school every day on his cycle.
The family, which also includes Hussain’s parents, is entirely dependent on his daily earnings of about Rs 300 to Rs 500, which he earned on farm jobs and other daily wage labour. Some days, he found no work.
“Ghoror obostha bhaal nohoi (the family’s financial situation is bad),” Khatun said, making it clear she wanted no money or help through any government programmes. “I just want my husband back.”
‘A Police Action Directed At Muslims’
Assam’s mass arrests, since 3 February 2023, unfolded in a state that reports one of India’s highest child-marriage rates but also its 10th-lowest female literacy.
As of 13 February 2023, over 3,015 people had been arrested, according to chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, critics said, had made Muslims the target of the underage-marriage sweeps.
Preliminary media reports quoting official data (here and here) indicated that Muslims were indeed the focus of the arrests, which Sarma denied.
“The Assam government’s crackdown on child marriages is more a police action directed against Muslims than an attempt to address a social problem,” the Deccan Herald wrote in a 10 February editorial.
This story was originally published in article-14.com . Read the full story here