"Virginity tests" on Indian immigrants were widespread

The controversial practice of subjecting Indian and Pakistani women to “virginity tests” by British immigration officials in the 1970s was far more widespread than the government admitted at the time, it has emerged.

The disclosure, reported by The Guardian on Monday on the basis of confidential Home Office files, is likely to spark calls for an official apology to at least 80 women who were forced to undergo such tests denounced by the Indian government as a “humiliating and obscene” practice.

Discontinued in 1979

The policy, which applied to women coming to Britain to marry British citizens, was supposedly intended to check their “marital status.” It was discontinued in 1979 after a diplomatic row between London and New Delhi, which said the practice reflected the “prejudices dating back to the dark ages”.

The then Prime Minister Morarji Desai personally intervened to seek an explanation from the British government, led at the time by Labour's James Callaghan. Embarrassed by the controversy, Callaghan wrote to Desai that “as soon as we heard of it, we made sure it would not happen again.”

The practice came to light in February 1979 after The Guardian reported the case of a 35-year-old teacher from India who was forced to undergo a “virginity test” by immigration officials at the Heathrow airport. She had arrived on January 24 ,1979, to marry her fiancé, a British resident of Indian descent. She told the newspaper that she signed a form consenting to a “gynaecological examination” only because she was frightened that she would otherwise be deported back to India.

“I have been feeling very bad mentally ever since. I was very embarrassed and upset. I had never had a gynaecological examination before,” she said.

The Home Office initially denied the incident, but, according to The Guardian, confidential files “dug up” by two Australian legal academics, Marinella Marmo and Evan Smith, show that the woman was offered £500 to ensure that she did not sue. The files reportedly show that a number of such tests were carried out by British missions in India and Pakistan.

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants described it as “yet another shameful chapter in the ignominious history of British immigration control”.

The United Kingdom Border Agency was quoted as saying: “These practices occurred 30 years ago and were clearly wrong. This government's immigration policies reflect the U.K.'s legal responsibilities and respect immigrants' human rights.”