Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002693
(PA/60660/2024)
(LP/07154/2024)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 9 September 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

LB (BANGLADESH)
Appellant
AND

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr Paxi-Cato, Black Antelope Law
For the Respondent: Mr Terrell, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 20 August 2025

Anonymity

Unless and until a tribunal or court directs otherwise, the Appellant is granted anonymity. No report of these proceedings shall directly or indirectly identify him, any of his witnesses or any member of his family. This direction applies to, amongst others, both the Appellant and the Respondent. Failure to comply with this direction could lead to contempt of court proceedings

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The Appellant is a Bangladeshi national born in 2000. She appeals with permission against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal to dismiss her protection and human rights appeal.

2. The basis of the Appellant’s claims was that since she arrived in the United Kingdom as a student, she has entered into a sexual relationship with a man to whom she is not married. Her family having discovered that relationship, they have threatened her and disowned her; she fears that if she returns to Bangladesh she will be subject to “honour” based violence and possibly even death.

3. The Respondent refused protection on credibility grounds and in its decision of 23 April 2025 the First-tier Tribunal agreed with the Respondent’s assessment and dismissed the appeal.

4. The Appellant now appeals on the grounds that elements of the credibility assessment were flawed and that this renders the entirety of the decision unsafe. At the hearing I heard helpful submissions from both representatives and I reserved my decision, which I now give.

5. I say at once that the reasoning of the First-tier Tribunal was in places hard to follow. The decision was in parts, as Mr Terrell agreed, unnecessarily and perhaps irrationally literal. At its paragraph 9 the decision says this:

“She said her father has told her that if she returns to Bangladesh, he will kill her. I do not find it credible that if the father’s intention was to kill the appellant, he would tell her not to return to Bangladesh as it would defeat his purpose, of killing her”

With respect to the First-tier Tribunal, this reasoning is hard to fathom. One would imagine that even the most conservative and furious of fathers may not actually want to see their daughter dead; issuing the threat would be sufficient, ensuring that she remains exiled from the family.

6. That said, I am not satisfied that the flaws in this decision are such that the decision should be set aside.

7. The first issue taken in the grounds is with the Tribunal’s finding, at its §6, that the Appellant had been inconsistent about who her boyfriend is. She had said at her screening interview that he was a “student colleague” but then at interview and hearing described having met him working in a shop. The written grounds contend that the two are not mutually exclusive, and before me Mr Paxi-Cato suggested an unfairness in that the Appellant had not been given an opportunity to address this concern. Both submissions are unarguable. The suggestion that perhaps the boy is both a student and works in a shop is undone by the fact that this is not the evidence of the Appellant. As is plain on the face of the decision, when the discrepancy was put to her at hearing she tried to blame the interpreter for what she said was an error. That also puts paid to Mr Paxi-Cato’s submission on the alternative; not only was this matter put to the Appellant, but her counsel had the opportunity to re-examine on it, and in fact it is even raised in the refusal letter. There is plainly no unfairness there.

8. Another criticism advanced by the Appellant is that it was not open to the Tribunal to characterise as inherently incredible the evidence that the Appellant would willingly tell her family that she was having a relationship outwith the bounds of marriage. I am afraid that in the absence of a reasonable explanation about why the Appellant would do such a thing, I have to agree with the First-tier Tribunal. Her own evidence was that she was from a traditional family and that father was “backwards thinking”. It is plainly obvious from the country background material on Bangladesh that this is a deeply patriarchal society where the sexual behaviour of young women is tightly controlled, by violence where believed necessary. If her family held beliefs and practices contrary to that societal norm it was for the Appellant to explain that. It was further open to the Tribunal to find some contradiction in the Appellant’s testimony about how and why she came to by studying in the UK. It was certainly under no obligation, contrary to what is suggested in the grounds, to take her evidence about these matters “at its highest”.

9. Finally, the findings that are critiqued by the grounds are not the whole picture. The First-tier Tribunal gave a series of reasons why it had rejected the Appellant’s evidence, and even if I subtract those which are highlighted, there remain sufficient reasons to have found the Appellant’s evidence about her circumstances to be unreliable and not capable of discharging the burden of proof.

Decisions

10. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is upheld and the appeal is dismissed.

11. There is at present an anonymity order in this ongoing protection appeal.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
21 August 2025