Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003997
First Tier Tribunal No: PA/54290/2024
LP/04203/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 11th November 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

MT (SRI LANKA)
Appellant
AND

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Ms Miszkiel, Counsel instructed by VJ Nathan Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr Tufan, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard remotely via Field House on 29 October 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 her, any of her witnesses or any member of her 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 national of Sri Lanka born in 1994. 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 protection claim before the First-tier Tribunal was that she had a well-founded fear of persecution in Sri Lanka for reasons of her political opinion, and ethnicity. The Appellant is a Tamil, originally from Jaffna. She avers that she and her family have a long history of persecution because of their support for organisations promoting the ideology of Tamil independence from Sri Lanka.
3. The Appellant states that her father was killed in 2006 because of his support for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Her mother moved with the Appellant and her siblings to Colombo, but having received threats there they fled to India in 2008. In 2015 they decided to return to Jaffna. The Appellant was then 21. She met a boy, and in November 2018 attended the Heroes Day demonstrations with him and his friends. They were attacked by government forces and the Appellant’s boyfriend was arrested. Although she managed to avoid arrest, three days later CID officers came to her home and took her to Nelliyadi Camp. There the Appellant was interrogated in her underwear, subjected to sexual abuse and torture. In that regard the Appellant relied on medical opinion that the three scars she bears on her left thigh are ‘typical of’ the scar that would develop if lit cigarettes were deliberately applied to the skin. ‘Typical of’ is a term of art used in the Istanbul Protocol: it means “the findings are highly characteristic of the type of trauma described, but other causes are still possible”. Dr Munro, who prepared the report, considered that here that other cause could be multiple stab wounds. The Appellant avers that this detention lasted 5 days, but the authorities continued to harass and threaten her. Fearing for her safety, she moved to Colombo and thereafter applied to come to the United Kingdom as a student.
4. The Appellant arrived in the UK towards the end of 2019. After the UK started to come out of the Covid lockdown she started to actively support a Tamil group operating in the diaspora called the Transitional Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). She raised funds to send back to her boyfriend in Sri Lanka, which she believes were going to help people affected by war. She has also attended protests here. In 2021 the Appellant learned that her boyfriend had been arrested in Sri Lanka. Soon after this her mother received a visit from the authorities asking questions about the Appellant and where she was. The Appellant now fears that the Sri Lankan authorities believe her to have been actively involved in fundraising for the LTTE whilst in the UK; the TGTE is a proscribed organisation in Sri Lanka and she fears that she will be detained, tortured and prosecuted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act should she be returned to Sri Lanka. At the hearing the Appellant relied on a letter dated 3 December 2024 from a Mr Anton Punethanayagam, who is a lawyer in Jaffna. Mr Punethanayagam states that he was instructed by the family in February 2023. As part of his investigations into the Appellant’s claims he visited Nelliyadi Camp himself, where CID officers confirmed that the Appellant is being sought in connection with “terrorist activities”.
5. There can be no doubt that if the Appellant’s claims are true, then she must be recognised as a refugee. I say this because that is what the country guidance says: see GJ and others (post-civil war; returnees) Sri Lanka CG [2013] UKUT 00319 (IAC) and KK and RS (sur place activities: risk) Sri Lanka CG [2021] UKUT 130 (IAC). I also say this because that fact was before me expressly accepted by Mr Tufan on behalf of the Secretary of State. The material facts, if proven, would be that the Appellant has been arrested and identified as a Tamil separatist after the end of the civil war, and there is a real risk Sri Lankan authorities are aware of her diaspora activities including association with the banned TGTE and what it regards to be fundraising for the LTTE. If Mr Punethanayagam’s correspondence is accepted at face value, that she is currently wanted in Sri Lanka. The applicable country guidance concludes that in those circumstances there would be a real risk of persecution.
6. The primary task of the First-tier Tribunal was therefore to evaluate the credibility of this claim. It did so, and rejected it.
7. It rejected the evidence that the Appellant had been sending money to her boyfriend, because she had failed to produce money transfer receipts to corroborate this claim. In the alternative it “did not find it credible” that the CID would conclude that the small amounts sent were for any political purpose. It rejected her evidence that both she and her boyfriend had been subject to short term arrests by the Sri Lankan authorities, on the basis that if there had been any real suspicion of involvement in Tamil separatism they would not be released. It rejected her claim to have been ill-treated in detention because she had not given that detail in her initial screening interview. The Tribunal identified an inconsistency in the asylum interview about how the Appellant’s father died: at one section it is recorded that he was shot, in another that he had cancer. It concluded that her stated fear was not genuinely held, and pointed to the delay between the Appellant’s alleged discovery that the authorities had been looking for her, in January 2021, and the date that she claimed asylum in October 2022.
8. The medical evidence is rejected as not credible because Dr Munro did not have access to the Appellant’s GP records. Its reliability is undermined because the doctor “based his report on what the appellant has told him”. Alternatively, it is found not to be reliable because the Appellant had not herself mentioned being burned by a lit cigarette. The Tribunal noted the evidence that the Appellant suffered from poor mental health but held that any risk of a deterioration, self harm or suicide would be mitigated by the “protocol in place”. Any trauma she might experience in being returned to Sri Lanka will be resolved when she “settles down”.
9. In respect of the Appellant’s sur place activities, the Tribunal held that even if she had been pictured on a demonstration carrying the Tamil Eelam flag, this was opportunistic on her part, and there was “no credible evidence” that the Sri Lankan CID would know about this. In the alternative, the Tribunal concluded that they would not care. Here the Tribunal cited a report produced by the International Organisation for Migration which stated “persons involved in protests abroad are of no interest to the government of Sri Lanka as demonstrating abroad is not an offence”. Since she was not a high level LTTE cadre there was not a real risk of her being a subject of interest on return.
10. The appeal was thereby dismissed.
Grounds: Discussion and Findings
11. The grounds of appeal run to 43 paragraphs and allege multiple errors of law in the approach taken by the First-tier Tribunal. I need not deal with all of them, since before me the Secretary of State accepts that they are all made out, and that the cumulative effect of these errors is that the decision cannot stand. I therefore confine myself to summarising the key points.
12. The First-tier Tribunal’s decision is set aside for the following errors of law:
i) Failure to consider material evidence.
The decision makes no mention at all of the letter from Mr Anton Punethanayagam. Although the decision does state that the Tribunal had regard to all of the material before it, this is, it is accepted, insufficient in the circumstances where his letter was a key document in the appeal. The Tribunal held there to be “no credible” evidence that the Appellant is wanted by the CID. If it intended by this to indicate that the letter was not credible, this is inadequate reasoning. Reasons need to be given for finding the letter not credible, so that the Appellant can understand why she has lost.
ii) Failing to consider submissions made.
The Appellant argued that the proscription of the TGTE and the application of the Prevention of Terrorism Act all post-dated GJ and Ors. Specific submissions were made regarding the application of the decision in KK and RS in this regard. The Appellant further argued that a discrete risk arose to the Appellant as a single woman without family support (her mother had died shortly before the hearing). The First-tier Tribunal does not address any of that in its decision.
iii) Having regard to immaterial evidence/ ‘cherry picking’
At its paragraph 25 the First-tier Tribunal takes “into account” a report by the IOM. That report was not before the Tribunal, and the parties had no indication from the bench that it was to be taken into account.
The Appellant’s Counsel has, since receiving the decision, been able to identify from the quote cited that the report in question was the result of the Fact Finding Mission in 2020. Had the Tribunal brought to the parties’ attention that it intended to consider this report, Counsel would have pointed out that it has already been the subject of adverse commentary by the Upper Tribunal in KK and RS [at its §§282-300]. Further Counsel would have had the opportunity to clarify that the section that troubled the judge in fact read:
“IOM stated that persons involved in protests abroad are of no interest as demonstrating abroad is not an offence although if links are found to banned organisations then it may increase the risk on return” (emphasis added)
The First-tier Tribunal omitted the italicised words from its citation. This was of course relevant because the Appellant was demonstrating in support of a banned organisation.
iv) Making an irrational / unlawful assessment of credibility.
The Tribunal appeared, at its paragraph 3, to acknowledge that the Appellant should be treated as a vulnerable witness. In its identification of ‘discrepancies’ arising from her evidence the Tribunal had however no regard at all to the Presidential Guidance Note No 2 of 2010 when assessing the answers – and omissions – in the Appellant’s screening interview.
The Tribunal identified an inconsistency in the evidence about whether the Appellant’s father had died of cancer or had been shot. In doing so it had no regard to her witness statements or the death certificate produced confirming that he had died of gunshot wounds.
The Tribunal gave three reasons for rejecting the evidence that the Appellant bears the scars of being tortured with a lit cigarette. It states that she did not claim to have been tortured with a lit cigarette. This is an error of fact. The Appellant expressly describes this in her witness statement at paragraph 11, and this is wholly consistent with her having stated at interview that she was tortured. It states that Dr Munro’s evidence is undermined by the fact that he had not had access to her GP reports. This was irrelevant. The scars were not an ongoing medical issue that the Appellant could have sought GP assistance for. Dr Munro was commissioned as an expert on scarring to evaluate them himself. The Tribunal rejects his conclusions on the basis that he has simply believed what the Appellant has told him. This is irrational in light of the fact that Dr Munro was evaluating physical evidence in accordance with his obligations under the Istanbul Protocol.
13. I am satisfied, and Mr Tufan accepts, that the cumulative effect of these errors is that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal cannot stand. It is set aside in its entirety and the decision in the appeal must be remade by a Judge other than Judge Chana.

Decisions
14. The appeal is allowed to the following extent. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside. The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal so that the decision may be re-made de novo by a differently constituted Tribunal.
15. For reasons that are not given, the First-tier Tribunal declined to make an anonymity order. This is an ongoing protection claim where the Tribunal had apparently accepted that the Appellant was a vulnerable witness. This decision, and the decision below, contain details of her private medical history including an allegation of sexual trauma. In light of these matters this was quite clearly a case where an anonymity order should have been made, notwithstanding the presumption in favour of open justice. I make one now.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
29 October 2025