Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003368

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/66710/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 14th January 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LODATO

Between

RB
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Holt, counsel
For the Respondent: Mr Tan, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 19 December 2025

Order Regarding 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

Introduction

1. I have decided to maintain the anonymity order originally made in these proceedings by the First-tier Tribunal because the underlying claim involves international protection issues in that the appellant claims to fear persecution or serious harm on return to India. In reaching this decision, I am mindful of the fundamental principle of open justice, but I am satisfied, taking the appellant’s case at its highest for these purposes, that the potential grave risks outweigh the rights of the public to know of his identity.

2. The appellant appeals with permission against the decision, dated 15 June 2025, of a judge of the First-tier Tribunal Judge (‘the judge’) to dismiss the appeal on international protection and human rights grounds.

Background

3. The appellant is a national of India who entered the UK in 2008 on a student visa and later claimed asylum on 29 June 2021. His case is advanced on the basis that he belongs to the Badhi caste, within the Dalit community, and that he has endured extensive and longstanding discrimination and violence because of this status. He asserts that this mistreatment began in childhood and culminated in serious assaults in 2008 in response to him speaking out against societal oppression. The appellant maintains that he became an activist for Dalit rights and that he remains at risk of persecution.

Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal

4. The judge dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the refusal of his protection and human rights claim.

5. The judge concluded that the appellant had not demonstrated that he was a member of the Dalit caste. This conclusion was informed by several factors: the appellant’s educational history and ability to travel abroad, which the judge considered inconsistent with the status he claimed; the fact that he obtained a passport and pursued higher education in India and the UK, which suggested opportunities not typically available to those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. The judge also noted that while the appellant produced a caste certificate dated 2006, only limited weight could be attached to it because its provenance could not be verified and the original document was not provided for examination of security features.

6. Moreover, the judge observed that the appellant’s family circumstances were inconsistent with his claimed social position. Although the appellant asserted that his family lived in poverty and lacked education, the judge found that his father’s employment as a police officer and ability to finance the appellant’s education and overseas travel contradicted this narrative. The judge reasoned that these factors, combined with the absence of corroborative expert evidence and the appellant’s ability to secure a student visa, pointed away from his claimed caste identity. In conclusion, the judge held that, even if the appellant were Dalit, the evidence suggested he belonged to a minority who had improved their circumstances and did not face a real risk of persecution on return.

7. At paragraph [28], the judge said this:

My conclusion from the evidence in relation to the appellant’s history is that it is unlikely he is from the Dalete [sic] class. I am influenced in this regard by his education and the points taken by the respondent in the refusal letter.

8. At [30], the judge found that even if the appellant had been credible about his caste, he was plainly one of the small minority who had managed to overcome the societal difficulties faced by such groups. As such, the appellant was not at risk of persecution.

Appeal to the Upper Tribunal

9. The appellant applied for permission to appeal in reliance on the ground that the judge had provided unlawfully inadequate reasons to come to the conclusion that the appellant was not a member of the caste he claimed. There were two sub-strands to this complaint. The first was that the judge had not adequately explained himself when he did not rely on the certificate of caste membership due to concerns about its provenance. The second was that in nebulously referring to being influenced by the reasons for refusal letter, the judge neglected to address the respondent’s misconceived assertion that the appellant’s name tended to suggest membership of a higher caste.

10. In a decision dated 17 July 2025, First-tier Tribunal Kudhail granted permission for the grounds to be argued.

11. At the error of law hearing, I heard oral submissions from both parties. During those submissions, Mr Holt accepted that the first strand of the grounds of appeal could not succeed because, in referring to provenance, the judge was plainly discussing the absence of evidence going to how the copy of certificate came to be in the appellant’s possession in the UK. Mr Holt rightly withdrew this argument and focussed on the second strand. I address any further submissions of significance in the discussion section below.

Discussion

12. The touchstone for considering inadequacy of reasoning as an error of law remains R (Iran) & Others v SSHD [2005] EWCA Civ 982. At [13]-[14] of the judgment of Brook LJ, it was emphasised that reasons must be sufficiently detailed to show the principles on which a decision was made and why the ultimate decision was reached. Reasons need not be elaborate nor is it necessary to address each and every matter which might have had a bearing on the overall decision if those which were material to the reasoning are articulated. In DPP Law Ltd v Paul Greenberg [2021] EWCA Civ 672, the Court of Appeal, in the context of employment proceedings, considered adequacy of reasoning as an error of law. Popplewell LJ, stressed, at [57], the need to consider judicial reasons fairly and as a whole without being hypercritical. Appellate restraint is required to read reasons benevolently. “Simple, clear and concise” reasoning was to be encouraged to enable to parties to broadly understand why they had won or lost. Further, it should not be assumed that an element of the evidence which was not expressly discussed was left out of account. While these observations were made in the context of employment proceedings, they are of relevance in the immigration and asylum sphere because this is also a jurisdiction in which decisions are made by expert tribunals attenuated by the need to give appeals anxious scrutiny. 

13. As alluded to above, this appeal now turns on a single issue: did paragraph [28] of the judge’s findings introduce unlawful ambiguity about the basis on which the appeal was dismissed. In short, the appellant’s contention was that it cannot be known if the judge adopted the misconceived naming point in rejecting the appellant’s caste membership. I am not persuaded that the judge’s reasons are defective in law on the strength of what was said or, more to the point, what was not said at [28]. Firstly, I must exercise caution not to view parts of the reasons in isolation stripped of their proper context. At [6], the judge summarised the basis on which the respondent refused the claim. This distillation of the reasons for refusal letter included the naming point. The judge returned to this theme at [25] where it was further noted that the appellant contested the respondent’s rationale.

14. While it is clear that the judge was aware of the naming point, the appellant has not shown that this issue weighed on him in rejecting his claimed caste membership. Various, and fully articulated, reasons were provided for finding against the appellant on this important point, not least his educational background and his father’s profession which strongly counted against this factual claim. It is fair to say that the judge might have been clearer, at [28], about what parts of the reasons for refusal letter “influenced” him. However, it is an inferential leap too far to assume that the naming point played a material role in the fact-finding analysis in circumstances where the judge fully set out why he found against the appellant and this point did not feature in that assessment. In reality, there is no uncertainty about why the judge concluded that the centrepiece of the narrative claim was not established on the evidence.

15. In addition to the above analysis, it is worth recording that paragraph [30] of the decision can only be sensibly read as a clear indication that the judge would not have found the appellant to be at risk of persecution even if he had succeeded in establishing the underlying claimed caste membership. Mr Holt properly recognised during the hearing that this presented difficulties for his case that any error was material. On the strength of the alternative finding at [30] as to risk, I would have concluded that any inadequacy of reasoning on the naming point would have been rendered immaterial.

Notice of Decision

The decision of the judge did not involve an error of law. It follows that I dismiss the appeal.

Paul Lodato

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

7 January 2026