Indian police have arrested bigger than 2000 men in a crackdown on illegal child marriages titillating girls under the age of 18 in a northeastern converse, officials acknowledged on Saturday.

Those arrested this week included bigger than 50 Hindu monks and Muslim clerics for allegedly performing marriages for underage girls in Assam, converse police chief Gyanendra Pratap Singh acknowledged.

“We have now to this level arrested 2169 men based entirely on 4074 registered police cases titillating a total of about 8000 men,” Singh acknowledged.

Many cases of child marriage in Assam, a converse of 35 million other folks, streak unreported.

Easiest 155 cases of child marriages in the converse had been registered in 2021, and 138 in 2020, based entirely on the Nationwide Crime Records Bureau.

In India, the true marriageable age is 21 for men and 18 for females. Poverty, lack of education, and social norms and practices, notably in rural areas, are regarded as causes for child marriages all the way thru the nation.

Tv images on Friday confirmed some younger females with infants of their fingers, crying and protesting the sudden arrests of their husbands.

“We had been struggling and somehow making ends meet. But we had been happy collectively. Who will provide for our livelihood now that my husband has been arrested?” requested a younger woman.

Singh acknowledged child marriages had been one explanation for the converse’s excessive slight one mortality and maternal mortality charges.

“I genuinely have requested the Assam police to act with a spirit of zero tolerance in opposition to the unpardonable and low crime on females,” Himanta Biswa Sarma, the converse’s top elected legitimate, tweeted.

India’s Parliament is pondering regulations to blueprint shut the age for marriage for females to 21 from 18, to insist it in step with men and promote gender equality.

India’s Minister for Ladies and Child Pattern Smriti Irani suggested Parliament on Friday that the cross would enable girls to total their education and raise out financial independence apart from achieving bodily and psychological maturity. – AP