Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-000987
First Tier Tribunal No: PA/64500/2023
LP/05863/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 5 September 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE MOXON

Between

NS (BANGLADESH)
(Anonymity order made)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for Home Department
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr C. Rahman, Counsel instructed by Novells Legal Practice
For the Respondent: Ms R. Arif, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Phoenix House (Bradford) on 23 July 2025

ANONYMITY

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the Appellant is granted anonymity.

No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the Appellant likely to lead members of the public to identify the Appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The Appellant is a national of Bangladesh born in 1995. He appeals with permission against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal to dismiss his appeal on protection and human rights grounds.

Background

2. The Appellant arrived in the United Kingdom in January 2021 with leave to enter as a student. He claimed asylum on 16 May 2022.

3. The basis of the Appellant’s claim for protection is that he has a well-founded fear of persecution in Bangladesh for reasons of his political beliefs. He avers that he has been a member of an organisation called Chhatra Dal since 2013. Chhatra Dal is described as being the student wing of the Bangladeshi National Party (BNP). He attended a number of demonstrations in support of this organisation. As a result of this affiliation the Appellant claims to have been attacked by supporters of the Awami League and/or the police, sustaining injuries to both his spine and his hand. He has also been subject to a number of malicious legal actions. The Appellant further asserts that a family dispute has gained a political dimension, in that an Awami League-supporting uncle has used his position to persecute the Appellant and his immediate family.

4. The Respondent accepted that the Appellant is a Bangladeshi national, and that he had attended a number of demonstrations in support of Chhatra Dal between 2013 and his arrival in the United Kingdom in 2021. She did not however accept the Appellant’s account of past persecution, or that he would face any difficulties today in Bangladesh. The Respondent points out that there has recently been a change of government in Bangladesh and that any risk feared by the Appellant would in any event no longer pertain, since the Awami League are no longer in power.

5. The First-tier Tribunal was not satisfied that the Appellant was telling the truth about what happened to him in Bangladesh, because it identified a number of discrepancies in his evidence. The Tribunal further agreed with the Respondent that there had been changes in the political and human rights situation in Bangladesh to the extent that a low-level supporter of Chhatra Dal would no longer have anything to fear.

Error of Law: Discussion and Findings

6. The Appellant was granted permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal on 26 February 2025. As that grant of permission notes, the grounds appeal run to 25 paragraphs and largely consist of recitation of the Appellant’s claim. They are in many respects entirely without merit. They do however identify some difficulties with the First-tier Tribunal decision which we have concluded, for the reasons that follow, mean that it must be set aside.

7. The Appellant relied on two affidavits sworn by members of the public in Bangladesh. Both of these gentlemen gave detailed evidence about events that took place on the 17th April 2017 near the Kudrot Ullah Mosque in Sylhet. They were both present in the vicinity to witness a police attack, with tear gas, batons and rubber bullets, against people taking part in a Chhatra Dal demonstration. Both claim to have seen the Appellant attacked. Mr Jamil Hasan Mehedi, for instance, states that he saw a worker of Chhatra Dal “seriously injured” after being kicked, boxed and charged with a stick. This man was recovered by members of the public, and Mr Mehedi was amongst those who saw him delivered to the hospital. At the hospital the injured man gave Mr Mehedi the mobile telephone number of his mother, so that Mr Mehedi could inform her about what had happened. Mr Mehedi explains that during the ensuing conversations he was introduced to the injured man: it was the Appellant. Mr Mehedi concludes his affidavit by stating that later on he came to know that the Appellant had to leave the country for his safety.

8. The First-tier Tribunal decision notes that during cross examination the Appellant had been asked how Mr Mehedi, and the other witness Mr Akbor Hussain, could possibly know that the Appellant was an active member of Chhatra Dal, or that he had to leave the country for his own safety. The Appellant had explained that they had learned this from conversations with his mother. The decision then says this:

“59. On his evidence it therefore appears that this significant part of the evidence of both witnesses is simply repeating what the mother of the appellant told them as they have no actual knowledge of the appellant. Taking their evidence at its highest they have seen a man being beaten who they subsequently discovered as the appellant. It appears that anything else they relate is what they have been told by the appellant’s mother”

9. No further comment is made on the evidence of these witnesses. The Appellant now contends that this was inadequate treatment of important evidence. Whilst the Tribunal was entitled to say that no additional weight could be attached to the men’s assertions about his political activity or why he had left Bangladesh, no conclusions are reached about the most important part of their evidence: that they had personally witnessed him being beaten and hospitalised by the police during an opposition protest. We would have to agree. The curious formulation “taking their evidence at its highest…” does not amount to a finding one way or the other. Paragraph 59 further appears to implicitly acknowledge that the men were given the additional information by the Appellant’s mother; nowhere does the Tribunal make any findings on why she might have done that. It is at least possible that she did so because it is true.

10. This failure to make a clear finding is, we regret to say, not isolated. We note that its §§28-32 the decision recognises some medical evidence provided about the Appellant’s spine; it notes that “mental illness amongst failed asylum seekers is not uncommon”. It does not however reach any conclusion on the contention that the injuries to the Appellant’s spine, and mental well-being, were caused when he was attacked on the demonstration discussed above.

11. This leads us to the second difficulty with the decision.

12. The Tribunal identifies what it regards as a number discrepancies in the Appellant’s evidence, and it is true, as Ms Arif submits, that the decision certainly and clearly forms the view that the “appellant is not credible”. She invites us to treat that general conclusion as a rejection of everything that the Appellant has had to say about events in Bangladesh. We are unable to do so. That is because a key part of his narrative had already been agreed by the Respondent: the refusal letter accepts that the Appellant had been politically active in Bangladesh. We read that as an acceptance that he was a member of Chhatra Dal and that he did, as he claimed, take part in several demonstrations. That should have been the starting point of any consideration of this claim. The country background evidence relating to the period in question indicates that members of organisations such as Chhatra Dal were subject to high levels of political violence during street protests, and suffered other forms of persecution such as malicious prosecution. The September 2020 CPIN Bangladesh – Political Parties and Affiliation, for instance, detailed mass arrests, attacks on protests, police complicity in political violence against opponents of the Awami League and the widespread use of malicious prosecutions. The Appellant’s evidence was therefore certainly plausible. Although in its introductory paragraphs the Tribunal’s decision acknowledges the contents of the refusal letter, nowhere are these important matters – the concession or the supporting country material - factored into its assessment of the key elements of the claim.

13. We therefore find that the general negative credibility finding made at the Tribunal’s paragraph 78 must be set aside.

14. Ms Arif asked us to find that any defect in the fact finding was in any event immaterial, because the government of Sheikh Hasina has now fallen. Whilst in the final analysis that point may be a good one, it is in the context of this protection claim important to first establish the facts. If the Appellant has, as he claimed, been subject to past persecution, the correct approach to whether a change in government obviates the risk of that persecution reoccurring would be paragraph 339K of the Immigration Rules:

“339K. The fact that a person has already been subject to persecution or serious harm, or to direct threats of such persecution or such harm, will be regarded as a serious indication of the person’s well-founded fear of persecution or real risk of suffering serious harm, unless there are good reasons to consider that such persecution or serious harm will not be repeated”.

15. We do not have before us sufficient evidence, or submissions, to safely conclude that the “good reasons” threshold has been reached. Whether it has will be a matter for the Tribunal that remakes the decision in this appeal.

Decision and Directions

16. The decision is set aside for error of law.

17. The matter is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be remade de novo by a judge other that First-tier Tribunal Judge Lester.

18. There is currently an order for anonymity in this ongoing protection appeal.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
23rd July 2025