Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002415

First-tier Tribunal No PA/54908/2022
LP/00499/2022

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 12th November 2025

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE DAVIES

Between

RRB
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms U Miszkiel of counsel, instructed by KT Solicitors Limited
For the Respondent: Ms N Kerr, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 17 October 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, [the appellant] (and/or any member of his family, expert, witness or other person the Tribunal considers should not be identified) 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 (and/or other person). Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellant is Mr RRB (“the Appellant”). He is a citizen of Sri Lanka who arrived in the UK on 9 July 2011 subject to a student visa valid from 14 June 2011 to 29 August 2012.
2. On 5 December 2017 the Appellant claimed asylum in the UK. His claim was refused by letter dated 21 October 2022. An appeal was lodged on 4 November 2022 and was heard at Taylor House on 26 September 2023. By a determination dated 13 October 2023 First Tier Tribunal Judge Shiner (“the Judge”) dismissed the appeal.
3. Grounds of appeal are dated 26 October 2023. Permission was refused by the First Tier Tribunal on 5 November 2023. The Upper Tribunal granted permission to appeal on all grounds on 22 August 2025.
4. I have a composite bundle of documents and, in addition, a witness statement from Ms Jegarajah of counsel, who appeared for the Appellant before the Judge, dated 12 October 2025 (to which Ms Kerr did not object). In the event, Ms Miszkiel did not make reference to the witness statement, however its contents have been taken into account.
5. It was the Appellant’s contention that his father had been imprisoned for 10 years due to his association as a funder for the LTTE and that the Appellant himself had been detained and mistreated by the Sri Lankan authorities in December 2010. On that basis, he asserted that he would be at risk of persecution/serious harm on return to Sri Lanka and would face very significant obstacles to his reintegration back into Sri Lanka by reference to paragraph 276ADE(1)(vi) of the Immigration Rules. The Respondent did not accept the arrest of the Appellant’s father or the Appellant having been detained: the Respondent’s position in the Reasons for Refusal Letter was that it was reasonable to expect the Appellant to provide documentary evidence regarding his father’s imprisonment and/ or his own detention, and that his failure to do so damaged his credibility.
6. The Appellant then, in support of his appeal, produced the following documents:
1. Letter dated 28 February 2023 from Sri Lankan attorney Mr K.M.S Kalupahana enclosing certified copy of the arrest warrant for the Appellant and confirming that the Appellant’s father is currently serving sentence in prison;
2. Representatives email dated 15 February 2023 to Mr K.M.S Kalupahana;
3. Representatives email dated 27 January 2023 to Mr K.M.S Kalupahana;
4. Letter dated 18 January 2023 from Mr K.M.S Kalupahana;
5. Representatives email dated 11 January 2023 to Mr K.M.S Kalupahana; and
6. Police report dated 13 December 2017 together with English translations.
7. The above documents were considered in the course of the Respondent’s review, dated 20 April 2023. The review notes, in connection with consideration of the above documents, that “…document fraud is endemic in Sri Lanka and that careful consideration should be given to all documents provided. The level of corruption in Sri Lanka is high and it is not difficult to obtain all manner of documents there which are not in fact genuine…”. It is further stated that “…the key documents provided are copies and the authenticity of them cannot be ascertained”.
8. In support of the appeal, the Appellant submitted a witness statement he made on 19 September 2023 and a statement from his mother dated 27 August 2023, along with the Sri Lankan Bar ID of Mr Kalupahana.
9. By the time of the appeal hearing on 26 September 2023, the original documents were available for the Judge to inspect, and it is recorded that the Judge did so at [42] in relation to documents AB1 to 6 and AB9 to 10 which were concluded to be the originals (i.e. the source documents from which copies were made) of the copy documents in the bundle.
10. The Judge recorded that there was consistency between those documents and that “Their connection together and form and that they were received by the solicitors in the manner described adds weight to their authenticity” [43]. It is further stated that if they were documents of truth, they would be strongly supportive of the Appellant’s claim [56].
11. The conclusion at [58] in relation to the documents is as follows:
In my overall evaluation of the evidence I judge, to the lower standard, that the Sri Lankan Documents are not documents of truth. In particular I reject the arrest warrant and receipt as being genuine they have been contrived I judge to support the Appellant’s case. I find that this is a case in which the attorney, Mr Kalupahana, has obtained false documents to aid the Appellant’s appeal. I place no criticism upon the Appellant’s English solicitors whom I judge to have acted with propriety in this regard.
The grounds of appeal: discussion
12. Ground 1 alleges that the Judge made a finding that Mr Kalupahana procured false documents and had presented the same to the Appellant’s UK lawyer, as being genuine and that this allegation was not put to the Appellant for comment, having not been made prior to the hearing. This failure is said to amount to procedural unfairness, as the Appellant and/ or Mr Kalupahana were not able to defend the professional integrity of Mr Kalupahana.
13. Thie ground of appeal was developed in oral submissions on the basis that Mr Kalupahana’s letter of 18 January 2023 referred to the need to file a motion in order to obtain a certified copy of the arrest warrant for the Appellant, and that the Judge’s approach to the documents expressly or impliedly asserted that Mr Kalupahana was complicit in the procurement of false documents and/ or in the provision of false information (in relation to the need to file a motion for the production of the arrest warrant).
14. In support of that argument, Ms Miszkiel relies on Abdi and Hassan v Entry Clearance Officer [2023] EWCA Civ 1455 at paragraphs 33 to 35 in particular. That authority refers to the case of TUI UK Ltd v Griffiths [2023] UKSC 48 for the principle that fairness generally requires that, if the evidence of a witness is to be rejected, it should be challenged at the hearing so as to give them an opportunity to address the challenge, subject the rule being applied flexibly in an individual case by reference to the overall fairness of the trial.
15. That approach has to be applied to the Judge’s consideration of the documents adduced in support of the appeal. It is important to read a decision as a whole, and not to isolate particular extracts, and I do read it in that way. However, the thrust of the decision is that the documents are not documents of truth and that Mr Kalupahana has obtained false documents.
16. There was discussion during the hearing as to whether the Judge had found the documents to be false without there being rejection of Mr Kalupahana’s evidence, i.e. whether his correspondence could be truthful but the documents he obtained nonetheless false. Ms Mizkiel did not consider that to be possible, because of Mr Kalupahana’s role in procurement of, in particular, the arrest warrant. I further note that at [58] the Judge appears to be drawing a distinction between the propriety of the conduct of the English solicitors, and that of Mr Kalupahana.
17. I conclude that there has been procedural unfairness amounting to an error of law. This is because the issue of the documents being false, and Mr Kalupahana having been complicit in the production of false documents, was not identified as an issue that the Appellant required to address, either before or during the hearing, so that he was deprived of an opportunity to address that issue.
18. I find this error to be material, as the issue of the reliability of the documents was clearly central to the outcome of the appeal and as such, a flawed approach to the credibility of the Appellant and/ or Mr Kalupahana in relation to the provenance of those documents is material to the analysis of the appeal. The determination at [56] acknowledges the central role of the documents in stating that “if they were documents of truth, they would be strongly supportive of the Appellant’s claim”.
19. Having found a material error of law as outlined above, I do not consider it necessary to address the remainder of the grounds of appeal.
20. In light of the above, I consider it necessary to set aside the Judge’s decision.
21. I invited the views of the representatives on future disposal of the appeal.
22. I agree with Ms Mizkiel that the correct approach is to remit to the First-tier tribunal. Applying AEB [2022] EWCA Civ 1512 and Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 00046 (IAC), I considered whether to retain the matter for re-making in the Upper Tribunal, in line with the general principle set out in statement 7 of the Senior President’s Practice Statements.
23. I took into consideration the history of the case, the nature and extent of the findings to be made, as well as the fact that the nature of the error of law in this case meant that the Appellant was deprived of a fair hearing.
24. I consider that it would be unfair for either party to be unable to avail itself of the two-tier decision-making process and I therefore remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
25. I am grateful to both representatives for their helpful submissions.

Notice of Decision
(1) The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did involve the making of an error on a point of law.
(2) The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside.
(3) The appeal is remitted, de novo, to the First-tier Tribunal to be reheard by any judge except First-tier Tribunal Judge Shiner.

Siân Davies

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

5 November 2025