In a landmark verdict, the Bangladesh Supreme Court has ordered the word "virgin" to be removed from marriage registration forms after campaigners challenged its inclusion as "humiliating and discriminatory".
Under the order by Deputy Attorney General Amit Talukder, the word would be replaced by "unmarried" (obibahita, meaning an unmarried woman) in a form that would-be brides have to fill in for their marriage certificate. Previously, the options were virgin (kumari), widow and divorced. Grooms were not required to fill in such an option.
Human rights groups had long criticized the inclusion of the word. In 2014, a writ petition was filed against the word's inclusion by the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (Blast) and the Bangladesh Mohila Parishad. Aynun Nahar Siddiqua, one of the lawyers involved in the case, called it a "landmark verdict."
The order is expected to come into effect by October, when the court will publish its full verdict. In addition, the judgement will also introduce the options "unmarried, widower or divorced" for the groom to fill in.
In 2018, the World Economic Forum ranked Bangladesh at the "top" of countries that were closing their gender inequality gap in South Asia. Earlier that year, the country's highest court banned the controversial "two-finger tests" for rape survivors. These so-called "virginity tests" were often reported in Bangladesh.
Marriage laws in Bangladesh were regulated under the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961(MFLO), which had also regulated the ability of husbands to effect divorce by saying talaq thrice. Now, they come under the Muslim Marriages and Divorces (Registration) Act 1974.
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