Image Courtesy: guwahatiplus.com
In another blow for the Himanta Biswas Sarma Government on child marriage crackdown in Assam, the Guwahati High Court reprimanded the state government for lodging the accused at the Detention Center, Matia.
In the recent crackdown on child marriage, which Assam Government launched on February 3 this year, over 3,047 accused was arrested. A total of 4,235 case had been registered against 6,707 accused persons in the state till February 17. Among them 2,587 persons were sent to judicial custody while 56 were in police custody. The state CM Himanta Biswa Sarma informed via social media.
It was then reported that most of the jails were overcrowded due to the large scale arrests. The Inspector General (law & order) of Assam Police, Prashanta Kumar Bhuyan told the media on February 7 that they have set up two large temporary jails to house the arrested individuals during the crackdown against child marriage. One is in Goalpara and the other is in Cachar district.
The Guwahati High Court on February 28, reminded the state about the nature of Detention Camp that is not supposed to house persons accused in criminal matters. While expressing displeasure, the court, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Sumitra Saikia found the State’s decision to be strange and prima facie unacceptable, reported Livelaw.
“If you want to enhance your prison capacity, do it in the place where the prisons are constructed. Why do you need to convert this detention centre into a prison?,” the bench questioned.
On Tuesday, while justifying the state move to put the accused in the detention center, Advocate General for the State, D Saikia submitted that the state government has partitioned the detention camp and made the temporary jail to avoid ‘mixing’. The Detection camp has a capacity to hold 3,000 people but presently only 200 person reside in it, he submitted.
Interestingly, the main motive behind the creation of Detention cum Transit Camp was to keep only the “suspected foreigners” in it.
As per UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Guidelines on the Applicable Criteria and Standards relating to the Detention of Asylum-Seekers and Alternatives to Detention, 2012 detention can happen only in officially recognized places of detention and prisons should be avoided for such purposes.
The court stressed on the same issue the State ought to have a separate place. “(You have) built a Centre of this magnitude. You must be thinking of bringing in people from other areas also. So if you start bringing ordinary criminals into the facility, you will be compromising …”
It said, “If you want to do capacity building exercises, you do for the prisons. You can’t encroach upon an institution which is meant only for the persons who are not convicts or offenders. They may be in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe because of a number of circumstances but you can’t keep them with ordinary criminals.”
The order may be read here:
Related:
Families protest arrests as questions mount on child marriage crackdown in Assam
Crackdown on child marriage claims four lives, including three women and one child
Asia’ biggest permanent “detention camp”, Matia Transit Camp, opens in Assam