Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER

Case No: UI-2025-004459
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/51197/2024
LP/11122/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 14th of January 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBNAL JUDGE SYMES

Between

TK
(ANONYMITY ORDER)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms L Mair
For the Respondent: Ms Nolan, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 24 November 2025

DECISION AND REASONS
1. This is the appeal of TK, a citizen of India born 30 November 2001, against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal (of 5 August 2025), itself dismissing her appeal against the Respondent’s refusal (on 13 December 2023) of her asylum claim (made on 12 November 2021).
Procedural history and facts
2. The Appellant claims that on any return to India she would be at risk of persecution as she has been the victim of domestic violence, of a serious nature, from her husband GS, and feared future violence or being the victim of an honour killing due to his actions or those of her in-laws, her parents and other family members. She alleged experiencing significant controlling behaviour from her marriage and after the engagement ceremony in India, and significant physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse after she arrived in the UK, including being forced to care for GS’s baby brother all day, having her location tracked via her phone, losing access to her email accounts and being forced into domestic labour. She had been the victim of rape and forced pregnancy at her husband’s hands. She also contended that as a trafficking victim currently receiving treatment and support for her mental health she would not be able to receive the same treatment in India where she would be at risk of destitution and where there were very significant obstacles to her integration. Amongst the evidence upon which she relied was a non-molestation order of 7 July 2021 (made without notice to GS).
The First-tier Tribunal’s decision
3. At the outset of the hearing in the First-tier Tribunal the Respondent indicated that it was now accepted that she faced very significant obstacles to integration in India; so the appeal proceeded solely on the basis of her claim to refugee status or to face violations of ECHR Art 3. The Judge accepted it was appropriate to treat the Appellant as a vulnerable witness.
4. The First-tier Tribunal concluded that
(a) The Appellant's claim to be at risk from her ex-husband, his family or her own family, was not well founded: she had last had contact with any of them around four years ago, the non-molestation order had not been renewed and there was no evidence he had breached it or been criminally charged. Whilst he had clearly subjected her to physical and mental abuse in the past, there was no evidence that he had been removed from the UK such that he would pose a threat to her in India, and both his family, and her own, appeared to have been supportive of the Appellant's UK studies.
(b) The Appellant was not a trafficking victim as she came to the UK as a student and fiancé. She was more likely to have come here willingly and with the agreement of both families to join her fiancé, marry and undertake their respective studies. It would make no sense for her ex-husband’s family to have funded her education only to consign her to providing free childcare for his infant brother. On her own account there were extended periods when the Appellant had not been able to care for the brother, as in January 2021 when she was effectively imprisoned in her own home without access to food or money, or when she stayed at her aunt Kamal’s home from March to May 2021.
(c) The Appellant was inconsistent in her evidence as to the level her education had reached in India, variously stating that she was educated to degree level or only to A level. Either way she was sufficiently educated by working to support herself in India and had managed to survive in the UK without family support.
(d) Her ex-husband and his family would have no interest in pursuing her further now the marriage had ended. There was no cogent evidence that the Indian authorities would be unable or unwilling to provide state protection: there was a functioning police service notwithstanding the existence of some corruption.
(e) The Appellant would not face any violation of her ECHR Art 3 or ECHR Art 8 rights on a return to India as any health problems would not reach the high threshold required. Nevertheless her appeal succeeded by reference to the Immigration Rule enshrining an aspect of her private life, the “very significant obstacles to integration” route, given the Respondent’s concession to that effect.
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal
5. Grounds of appeal of 19 August 2025 contended that the First-tier Tribunal had erred in law (I have restructured them somewhat for clarity):
(a) Rejecting elements of the Appellant's case that were not in issue given that the refusal letter had accepted her account of familial abuse, as confirmed at the hearing by the Home Office Presenting Officer.
(b) In finding that she was no longer of interest to her own family or that of her husband, overlooking material evidence including the long history of coercion and control, her own evidence that the head of her local panchayat (village council) issuing threats to her own family and insisting that she must return to her in-laws, her evidence of a video secretly filmed by GS sent to her family with the threat that he would release it publicly if she did not drop the police charges against him, photographs of her naked sent to her male relatives, GS's sending of emails from her account which he had hacked, and her own family’s threat that they would return her to her in-laws “dead or alive”.
(c) Failing to take account of the country expert’s opinion that honour-based retaliation risks from family members were prevalent for women who had left marriages in India.
(d) Failing to take account of evidence relevant to state protection: the Appellant’s evidence that GS's uncle was a local politician with national connections and the expert’s opinion that state mechanisms were likely to fail domestic violence victims, and the evidence from the Respondent’s own CPIN of “persistent gaps in enforcing the laws, relevant policies and guidelines aimed at justice for victims of sexual violence” in particular for rape survivors.
(e) Making material errors of fact or failing to take account of relevant evidence in assessing her ability to relocate in India without facing unduly harsh conditions, given that the Appellant was a Sikh, had been barred from studying in the UK as part of the campaign of control over her (contrary to the Judge’s view that she had been supported to study here), and, in assessing her independence, overlooking the evidence that she was presently wholly reliant on support from the Ashiana network who had written to confirm that since July 2021 they had her with safe house accommodation/ refuge and “wrap around support” from a multi-disciplinary team with regard to health, housing, legal, educational and financial matters due to her having “very little confidence and very low self-esteem” and rarely managing to leave her room. Furthermore, the expert’s opinion that she would face serious challenges in securing housing, employment, and access to mental health care, particularly given the need to procure an Aadhaar card linked to her biometric data.
(f) Overlooking the evidence of the Appellant's trafficking victim status found in a Pre Action Protocol letter. It clearly argued that she had been harboured in (rather than transported to) the UK for the purposes of exploitation.
6. Permission to appeal was granted on all grounds on 25 September 2025.
7. Before me for the Appellant Ms Mair made the rather bold submission that the NRM decision of 25 September 2025 now accepting the Appellant to have been exploited via domestic servitude, whilst post-dating the decision of the First-tier Tribunal, should nevertheless be admitted as relevant to the Upper Tribunal’s task in determining whether an error of law had been committed. She developed the submissions in her grounds of appeal, emphasising that the First-tier Tribunal had acted unfairly by going behind the concessions on credibility
8. For the Respondent Ms Nolan submitted that the oral evidence was found to raise concerns which justified the First-tier Tribunal’s treatment of the appeal. Authorities such as Volpi required the Upper Tribunal to assume that all relevant evidence had been considered absent clear signs to the contrary. If the first ground of appeal alleging procedural unfairness was established, the appeal would require re-hearing before the First-tier Tribunal.
Decision and reasons
9. I accept that the grounds of appeal are made out. In those circumstances I need not consider whether the NRM conclusive grounds decision should have been admitted into evidence at the error of law stage of proceedings. The most important issue is the question of the Respondent’s concession. The refusal letter stated that some material facts were accepted: namely that she was a victim of domestic violence and that she received death threats from her ex-husband and other relatives. The issue is not so much that there are no circumstances whereby the Tribunal can go behind a concession, but that here the First-tier Tribunal makes no reference to that concession’s implications when making findings flatly inconsistent with it (such as family members having been supportive of her education such as to show they had not trafficked her here). Ms Nolan did not suggest that the concession had not been made or was misunderstood.
10. As to the other grounds, authorities typified by Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464 of course demonstrate that an appellate tribunal should not lightly assume that all the evidence has not been considered at first instance, and that attributing weight to the evidence is a matter for the judge below. Reasons are always capable of being better expressed and one should not pick over a decision’s wording as if it was legislation.
11. However, here the First-tier Tribunal came to conclusions which demanded engagement with aspects of the evidence that pointed in a different direction. The greater the relevance of a piece of evidence to the issue being determined, the greater is the requirement for reasoned engagement with it.
12. The simple assumption that the end of the Appellant’s marriage with her ex-husband would terminate any adverse interest in her needed to be assessed in the light of the expert’s opinion that honour-based retaliation risks from family members could endure notwithstanding the end of the underlying marriage.
13. Before rejecting the Appellant’s claim to be a trafficking victim on account of her having studied in the UK, it was essential to engage with the evidence that she had in fact been harboured in this country over a period when those very studies were said to have been facilitated. The Appellant had arguably been recruited, transported and harboured; by coercion and deception; for the purpose of exploitation (ie the work she was required to do in caring for GS's younger brother). The fact there may have been occasional interruptions in that care work does not render it non-exploitative. So the ingredients of trafficking were arguably present whether or not an intention to study in the UK was also present. The willingness of her in-laws to fund her education cannot be considered in isolation from the graphic account of abuse that she suffered at their hands.
14. Finally, the Tribunal made findings as to the availability of state protection against the violence threatened by the Appellant's in-laws (regarding which her family said they would not protect her) without engaging with the expert opinion evidence.
15. Given that the appeal will have to be re-determined afresh with full factual findings (albeit taking account of the concession on “very significant obstacles to integration”, it is appropriate to remit it to the First-tier Tribunal.

Notice of Decision:
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of errors on points of law; its decision is set aside and the appeal is remitted back to the First-tier Tribunal for determination afresh.

8 January 2026

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Symes

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber