It is not the first time that the Chinese police have cracked "prostitution cases" involving virgins. The latest victims, reported by the media on Tuesday, are two primary school students, aged 15 and 13, in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province. The local police detained the girls on March 16. Only after the Kunming Forensic Hospital examined the girls and certified them as virgins, did the police release the girls. Why do the police indulge in this farce of incriminating the innocent? An article in Chongqing Times explains. Excerpts:

As has happened in similar cases before, the police arrested the victims based on hearsay and used torture to extract confessions. Their enforcement of the law by the "presumption of guilt" has rarely been challenged.

It is unimaginable how much the two young girls would have suffered but for the hospital certifying their virginity. In all likelihood, they would have been put behind bars. Thus defamed and their dignity trampled upon, the girls would have had to live with the stigma and social discrimination.