The government tried to deny a passport to the daughter of a British citizen in conduct described as “grotesque” by a high court judge.
Mr Justice Walker was asked to rule on the dispute between the Home Office and Deelavathi Bondada, 45, who was born in India in 1969, two years after her father, Chandraiah, became a British citizen.
The judge said that “untenable objections” had been made against the woman’s claim to British citizenship. He ruled that she was a British citizen by descent and therefore entitled to a British passport, so quashed the Home Office’s October 2013 decision refusing her one.
Walker said government officials who objected to Deelavathi’s claim had ignored “compelling DNA evidence”. He said the unsupported speculation that her mother, Ganikamma, who was now 86, had had a secret lover who fathered Deelavathi was “so far-fetched as to be absurd”.
“It is not a real possibility, let alone a possibility of such substance as to enable the court to make a finding that Deelavathi has not shown on the balance of probability that Chandraiah was her father,” the judge said in a written ruling.
“The result was that this stance effectively made an accusation that [Deelavathi’s] mother has lied about the patronage of her children for more than 60 years. At a very late stage in the present proceedings the home secretary accepted the DNA evidence.
“Nevertheless the stance taken on behalf of the home secretary when rejecting [Deelavathi’s] claim has, without a shred of evidence to support it, continued to make the same effective accusation. The conduct of the UK government in this regard has been grotesque.”
The judge said lawyers representing the Home Office were not to blame but had been asked to “defend an impossible position”.
Deelavathi’s family said she had been born in the village of Nagullanka near Chennai, Walker said.
He had analysed “crucial issues” about her date of birth and her parents’ marital status before concluding that a decision to refuse her a passport should be quashed.
