(Guwahati) More than 1,000 people were arrested in northeast India on Tuesday during the government’s second campaign to combat child marriages in the region this year, authorities said.
The state of Assam had already arrested 4,000 people during a previous campaign carried out in February, including parents of married children and civil registrars who registered the marriages of minors.
India has more than 220 million child brides, according to UN figures. Although the number of child marriages has declined significantly this century, the practice remains widespread.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), child marriage refers to any formal marriage or unofficial union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child.
The state’s chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, announced that police had launched “a special operation which began in the early hours of dawn”.
“The number of arrests will probably increase,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “the number currently stands at 1039.”
Mr. Sarma ran his campaign on a program including completely eradicating child marriages in his state by 2026.
The legal age of marriage in India is 18, but millions of children are forced to marry younger, especially in poorer rural areas.
Many parents marry off their children in hopes of improving their financial security.
Child marriages mainly affect girls who are forced to drop out of school to take care of the home. Their early marriages are often followed by pregnancies, which can cause physical and mental health problems and complications during childbirth.
In a landmark judgment delivered in October 2017, India’s Supreme Court declared that sexual intercourse with a wife under the age of 18 constitutes rape. She recognized that child marriage affects girls in all aspects of their lives and violates their rights.