Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-001472
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/56463/2024
LP/14276/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 27 August 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KIRK

Between

JS
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A. Otchie, instructed by S & K Law Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms J. Isherwood, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 2 June 2026

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. The Appellant appeals against the decision of a Judge of the First-tier Tribunal (‘Judge’) who, in a decision promulgated on 21 January 2026 (‘Decision’), dismissed his appeal against the Respondent’s decision on 22 February 2024 to refuse his protection claim (‘Refusal Decision’).
2. Permission to appeal was granted by the First-tier Tribunal on 26 March 2026.
Anonymity
3. I consider that it is appropriate to maintain the anonymity order made by the First-tier Tribunal. No party asked for it to be set aside.
Background
4. The Appellant is an Indian national from Tamil Nadu. His wife and two adult daughters reside in India. He has worked in a variety of jobs including as a farmer and for an aluminium company, which led him to travel extensively. From 2017 until he left India in April 2022, he ran a pawn broker shop.
5. The Appellant claims to have always supported the policies of the communist party in India. He provided financial support to the local branch to cover its monthly meeting expenses, specifically the cost of printing posters and venue hire, including lights and sound, and settling hotel bills. Although the Appellant supported the principles of the communist party, he did not participate in politics and was not a member of any political party. Members of the communist party made monthly visits to the Appellant’s local area, and they would collect money from every shop owner, including from the Appellant.
6. In February 2022, two communist party members came to speak at a local meeting. After the meeting, they asked whether the Appellant could arrange accommodation for them, but he was unable to do so because there were no hotel rooms available. The two communists party members stayed overnight at the Appellant’s shop where he also resides. They left at 6am the next morning to travel to Chennai by bus. The Aadhaar cards of the two communist party members were checked by the police who boarded the bus at Trichy, and they were identified as former Naxalite members. They were interrogated in relation to where they had come from, and they told the police that they had stayed overnight at the Appellant’s shop. They said they had known the Appellant for two or three years, and they gave the police the address of his shop. The two former Naxalites were arrested by the police.
7. One of the police officers was a friend of the Appellant, and he informed him that the two communist party members had been arrested. He advised the Appellant to leave his home and go to a safe place. After receiving this advice, the Appellant went to his parents’ house. His father told the Appellant to leave immediately and take his passport and go and stay with a friend of his father who lives in Chennai.
8. The Appellant claims that the police obtained the details of his links to the communist party, and the incident involving the two former Naxalites triggered their interest in the Appellant. The police attended the Appellant’s house and spoke to his wife. The police said to the Appellant’s wife that he had helped two people from the Naxalite movement, and they needed to speak with him. His wife informed the police that the Appellant had gone to his father’s house. The police raided the Appellant’s shop and then went to his parents’ house.
9. In April 2022, the police visited the Appellant’s parents’ house and were very aggressive and threatened the Appellant’s mother to reveal his whereabouts. His father realised the seriousness of the situation, and he arranged for an agent to organise the Appellant’s travel to the United Kingdom (‘UK’).
First-tier Tribunal Decision
10. The Judge stated that he had “carefully considered” the oral and written evidence of the Appellant, and the expert report of Dr Chris Smith, but did not accept, on the balance of probabilities, that the Appellant had given a credible account (at [12]).
11. The Judge found the Appellant’s narrative to be “inherently implausible and not credible on the balance of probabilities.” (at [13]). The Appellant’s overall claim was “lacking any real depth”, and the Judge was not persuaded that the Appellant had always been a supporter of the communist party. The Appellant had “given no detail at all as to his political beliefs or why he found the communist party to be of such interest to him.” The Judge noted that this was significant because “the central feature of the [Appellant’s] claim is that it was because of his links to the local communist party that he found himself in a position to support two former Naxalite members who needed somewhere to stay.” (at [13]). The Judge noted that the Appellant had provided “little detail in his interview or his statement as to his political beliefs, and the Judge was not persuaded the Appellant had “shown on balance to be a committed supported (sic) of the communist party.” (at [14]).
12. The Judge further considered that the events the Appellant claimed led to his departure from India “to be simply not credible.” (at [15]). He did not accept “that the police would have any interest in where two people stayed who has (sic) come to the area to attend a communist party meeting.” The Judge did accept that the police “may have been interested in two individuals identified as being involved with the Naxalite movement”, but he was not persuaded that the police “would have been interested in where or who had provided them with accommodation.” Furthermore, the Judge did not accept that this “would have led to the police to come and look for” the Appellant, and “seek him out for putting two people up.” The Judge considered that this claim “simply does not have the ring of truth to it.” (at [15]).
13. The Judge noted the evidence that the Appellant’s family in India had not had any further issues with the police since the Appellant arrived in the UK over three years ago. In the Judge’s view, this strongly suggested that the police currently have no interest in the Appellant, and that the police had no interest in him in 2022. The Judge recognised that this was contrary to the Appellant’s suggestion that “the authorities were so interested in him that they returned several times to visit his wife and parents.” The Judge entirely rejected the claim that “the authorities were interested in the appellant but then effectively gave up a matter of months later.” (at [16]).
14. Noting that the Appellant travelled from Chennai to the UK, transiting via Mumbai, the Judge found it “significant” that the Appellant “was faced with no issues at the airport and there was nothing on any internal system flagging the appellant as someone of interest.” (at [17]).
15. The Judge concluded that the Appellant had “not shown to any standard that [he] had a well-founded fear of persecution in India and that that led him to flee.” (at [18]). The Judge entirely rejected the Appellant’s narrative as it was not credible and had not shown that he was of any interest to the police, or that he had the claimed political sympathies. The Judge considered that even if the incident happened as claimed, the ease with which the Appellant travelled out of India, and that there had been no interest shown in him by the police since 2022, showed that “the authorities have no interest in him as of now and as such he is not at a risk on return.” (at [19]).
Permission to appeal to Upper Tribunal
16. The Appellant sought to appeal on the following grounds:
Ground 1: Procedural unfairness – adverse inference from issue not put to the Appellant
Ground 2: Reaching a conclusion at odds with the evidence/failing to take into account evidence before the Tribunal.
17. Permission to appeal was granted on both grounds. In granting permission, the Upper Tribunal stated:
“Both grounds are interrelated. Although the judge states that he has considered all the evidence including the expert evidence of Dr Chris Smith there is no engagement with the expert evidence of Chris Smith concerning the findings made at paragraph 15 that the Applicant’s claim simply does not have the ring of truth to it. This is in the context of whether the police would have been interested in the Applicant due to his association with two people who were involved in the Naxalite movement. The Applicant’s claim is that he provided them with accommodation. The grounds at paragraph 9 raise an arguable error of law in view of the expert report of Dr Chris Smith that clearly states that it is not plausible that low ranking Naxalites operatives and sympathisers would escape the adverse interest of the authorities. The judge does not engage with this particular aspect of the expert report and it is not sufficient to state that the expert report has been taken into account without referring to relevant aspects of the experts (sic) evidence in making negative findings on the core aspects of the Applicant’s claim.
All grounds give rise to an arguable error of law.”
18. The Respondent did not file a Rule 24 response.
19. The Appellant filed a Skeleton argument dated 25 May 2026 (‘ASA’).
20. The oral and written submissions at the hearing are a matter of record and need not be set out in full here. The Tribunal had access to all the documents before the First-tier Tribunal and the composite bundle (‘CB’) filed by the Appellant.
21. The Tribunal heard oral submissions from Mr Otchie for the Appellant, and Ms Isherwood for the Respondent, which I have fully considered, as well as the ASA.
Appellant
Ground 1: Procedural unfairness
22. The Judge’s adverse finding at [13]–[14], that the Appellant had given “no detail at all” about his political beliefs and had not shown he was a genuine supporter of the communist party was not put to the Appellant at the hearing and was not the subject of cross-examination (ASA [11]).
23. The Judge erred in reaching his conclusion at [13] not having raised his concerns about the Appellant’s political beliefs during the hearing and the Appellant not being cross-examined on this point. The Judge considered the alleged lack of detail of the Appellant’s political beliefs as an important part of the claim and used it as a platform for rejecting the Appellant’s account as implausible. The Appellant was therefore deprived of the opportunity to address the Judge’s concerns and direct the Tribunal to the relevant parts of his evidence (including his interview answers and his witness statement) (ASA [12]).
24. The Appellant’s witness statement clearly contains important detail about his political beliefs (see [11] [CB, 528]) and moreover, the Judge completely overlooked the details the Appellant provided in his statement of evidence form (SEF) asylum interview (see responses to questions 43-48 [CB, 89-90]) (ASA [13]).
25. The resulting unfairness is material because the credibility assessment was central to the dismissal of the appeal, and the credibility findings were not insulated by alternative, independent reasons (ASA [14]).
Ground 2: Failure to engage with / consider expert evidence
26. The expert country report of Dr Chris Smith was before the Tribunal. The Judge stated at [12], that he had ‘carefully considered’ the expert report, but the reasoning does not engage with the parts of the report that bear directly on the decisive findings at [15]. Moreover, at [15], the Judge concluded it was not credible that the police would have any interest in who provided accommodation to former Naxalite members. That conclusion is reached without addressing the expert’s assessment (as identified in the grant of permission) that it is “not plausible that low ranking Naxalite operatives and sympathisers would escape the adverse interest of the authorities” (see [48] [CB, 551]) (ASA [15]).
27. The Judge’s reasoning does not explain why he rejected (or discounted) these expert conclusions. He therefore failed to consider material evidence, and/or failed to give adequate reasons for a finding that went to the core of the Appellant’s protection claim (ASA [16]).
28. The expert analysis undermined the Judge’s own plausibility findings and the ‘ring of truth’ conclusion. The error is material as proper engagement with the expert report may well have led to a different credibility and risk assessment (see Country Policy and Information Note India: Political parties and affiliation Version 1.0 December 2023, paras 17.2.1 and 17.4.1) (ASA [17]).
29. Mibanga v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 367 (‘Mibanga’) at [24]-[32] makes clear that credibility and risk must be assessed holistically, and it is an error to reach key adverse conclusions without proper engagement with expert material relied upon. (ASA [10(ix)].
Respondent
Ground 1: Procedural unfairness
30. The Respondent contends that there was no requirement for the Appellant to be questioned at the hearing of the First-tier Tribunal in relation to his political beliefs. Ms Isherwood drew my attention to [83]-[84] of the Court of Appeal’s recent decision in MR (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWCA Civ 473 (‘MR’). She submitted that this is authority for the proposition that if an appellant is made aware by the respondent that an issue is in dispute, then unless there is a withdrawal or concession made by the respondent, then the Judge is obliged to consider the evidence before the Tribunal on this issue, regardless of whether it is the subject of cross-examination of the appellant.
31. The Appellant was put on notice in the Refusal Decision (CB, 55) that the Respondent did not accept that he held the political beliefs he claimed to hold. The Refusal Decision made clear that the Respondent found that the Appellant’s evidence lacked sufficiency of detail and specificity in relation to why he supported the communist party, and he could not articulate any political aims specific to the party when asked what he liked about its aims, beliefs or principles. The burden was on the Appellant to substantiate his protection claim, and he cannot rely on cross-examination as the vehicle to address any concerns about the credibility of key aspects of his claim, including his political beliefs. The findings made by the Judge were open on the evidence for him to make, and there is no error of law.
Ground 2: Failure to engage with / consider expert evidence
32. The Judge found that the Appellant’s claim that he held political beliefs, specifically those of the communist party, to be inherently implausible and not credible. The Appellant’s claimed link to the local communist party was the reason he claims he met the former Naxalite members and subsequently provided them with overnight accommodation at his shop. Having found the Appellant’s claim that he was a committed supporter of the communist party to be implausible, it followed that his claim to have met and assisted the Naxalite members was improbable, and therefore the expert evidence in relation to the consequences for an individual who is associated with the Naxalite movement and its members did not require close consideration. The Judge’s findings were open to him on the evidence before the Tribunal, and he made no error of law.
Decision on error of law
33. Having carefully considered the oral and written submissions made by the parties and the relevant parts of the Decision, I have concluded, for the reasons that follow, that the Decision does not contain a material error of law and shall stand.
34. When considering whether the Judge made a material error of law, I remind myself of the limited circumstances in which an appellate tribunal may interfere with findings of fact and credibility by the First-tier Judge. In Volpi & Anor v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464; [2022] 4 W.L.R. 48 (‘Volpi’) Lewison LJ, with whom Males and Snowden LJJ agreed, explained interference with findings of fact and credibility is appropriate only where such a finding is ‘plainly wrong’ or ‘rationally insupportable’ at [2]:
“The appeal is therefore an appeal on a pure question of fact. The approach of an appeal court to that kind of appeal is a well-trodden path. It is unnecessary to refer in detail to the many cases that have discussed it; but the following principles are well-settled:
(i) An appeal court should not interfere with the trial judge's conclusions on primary facts unless it is satisfied that he was plainly wrong.
(ii) The adverb “plainly” does not refer to the degree of confidence felt by the appeal court that it would not have reached the same conclusion as the trial judge. It does not matter, with whatever degree of certainty, that the appeal court considers that it would have reached a different conclusion. What matters is whether the decision under appeal is one that no reasonable judge could have reached.
(iii) An appeal court is bound, unless there is compelling reason to the contrary, to assume that the trial judge has taken the whole of the evidence into his consideration. The mere fact that a judge does not mention a specific piece of evidence does not mean that he overlooked it.
(iv) The validity of the findings of fact made by a trial judge is not aptly tested by considering whether the judgment presents a balanced account of the evidence. The trial judge must of course consider all the material evidence (although it need not all be discussed in his judgment). The weight which he gives to it is however pre-eminently a matter for him.
(v) An appeal court can therefore set aside a judgment on the basis that the judge failed to give the evidence a balanced consideration only if the judge's conclusion was rationally insupportable.
(vi) Reasons for judgment will always be capable of having been better expressed. An appeal court should not subject a judgment to narrow textual analysis. Nor should it be picked over or construed as though it was a piece of legislation or a contract.”
35. The Court of Appeal has recognised that the First-tier Tribunal is a specialist fact-finding tribunal, and the Upper Tribunal is required to exercise restraint in its oversight of its reasoning: In Ullah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWCA Civ 201; [2024] 1 W.L.R. 4055 (‘Ullah’) Green LJ, with whom Lewison and Andrews LJJ agreed, stated at [26]:
“Sections 11 and 12 TCEA 2007 Act restricts the UT’s jurisdiction to errors of law. It is settled that:
(i) the FTT is a specialist fact-finding tribunal. The UT should not rush to find an error of law simply because it might have reached a different conclusion on the facts or expressed themselves differently: see AH (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] UKHL 49 [2008] 1 AC 678 at paragraph [30];
(ii) where a relevant point was not expressly mentioned by the FTT, the UT should be slow to infer that it had not been taken into account: e.g. MA (Somalia) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] UKSC 49 at paragraph [45];
(iii) when it comes to the reasons given by the FTT, the UT should exercise judicial restraint and not assume that the FTT misdirected itself just because not every step in its reasoning was fully set out: see R (Jones) v First Tier Tribunal and Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority [2013] UKSC 19 at paragraph [25];
(iv) the issues for decision and the basis upon which the FTT reaches its decision on those issues may be set out directly or by inference: see UT (Sri Lanka) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1095 at paragraph [27];
(v) judges sitting in the FTT are to be taken to be aware of the relevant authorities and to be seeking to apply them. There is no need for them to be referred to specifically, unless it was clear from their language that they had failed to do so: see AA (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1296 at paragraph [34];
(vi) it is of the nature of assessment that different tribunals, without illegality or irrationality, may reach different conclusions on the same case. The mere fact that one tribunal has reached what might appear to be an unusually generous view of the facts does not mean that it has made an error of law: see MM (Lebanon) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] UKSC 10 at paragraph [107].”
36. These principles were recently approved by Bean LJ in Kapikanya v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 987 at [20]-[21, and Dove LJ in MN (Vietnam) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWCA Civ 485 (‘MN Vietnam’) at [36].
Ground 1: Procedural unfairness
37. In MR, the Court of Appeal gave guidance on the circumstances in which fairness requires the Home Office Presenting Officer to put the respondent’s case to the appellant in cross-examination. The Court of Appeal explained at [51]-[53], with reference to paragraphs of the Upper Tribunal decision that was the subject of the appeal, as follows:
“In an asylum appeal, the appellant bears the burden of proving his claim. The system is adversarial, and in asylum appeals, the parties frame the issues for a judge to decide. [The Upper Tribunal] referred to the relatively recent decision of the UT in Lata (FtT: Principal Controversial Issues) [2023] UKUT (IAC) 00163; [2023] Imm AR 1416 (Lata). The [Respondent’s Review] clearly identified MR’s sexuality and his relationship with [AK] as an issue to be considered’ by the F-tT (paragraph 39).
The Judge’s role is normally to decide the issues on the evidence put forward by the parties (paragraph 40). The Judge also has to ‘ensure that the proceedings are fair’ (paragraph 41). A witness who gives evidence is liable to be cross-examined. In general, a party must cross-examine a witness if he wishes to submit that that evidence should not be accepted, giving the witness an opportunity to explain ‘any contradiction or alleged problem with their evidence’. The rule has a long history. It was often referred to as the rule in Browne v Dunn (1893) 6 R 67 (per Lord Herschell, at 70-71) (paragraph 42). In paragraph 43 the UT quoted paragraph 53 of the judgment of Lord Neuberger in the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Chen v Ng [2017] UKPC 27; [2018] 1 P&CR DG2 (‘Chen’). The purpose of the rule is not to benefit the witness, but to ‘ensure the overall fairness of the proceedings for the parties. Maintaining fairness includes enabling a judge to make a proper assessment of all the evidence to achieve justice in the cause. The rule is directed to the integrity of the court process itself’…
A consequence of applying the rule was that if a party decides not to cross-examine a witness on an important point, he may have trouble submitting that the evidence of that witness should not be accepted, because the witness did not know that that evidence was challenged (paragraph 45). The rule is flexible (paragraph 46). In paragraph 48, [the Upper Tribunal] said that Lord Herschell had accepted in Browne v Dunn that there ‘was no obligation to raise such a matter in cross-examination if it is perfectly clear that [the witness] has had full notice beforehand that there is an intention to impeach the credibility of the story which he is telling’. That point had been acknowledged paragraph 53 of Chen (paragraph 48).”
38. In the present case, fairness did not require the Respondent to put to the Appellant in cross-examination that he did not hold the political beliefs he claimed to hold. The Appellant was aware this issue was in dispute from the Refusal Decision, and he had the opportunity to address it in the evidence he submitted to the First-tier Tribunal.
39. The Refusal Decision relevantly stated (CB, 55):
“You lacked sufficiency of detail and specificity when asked why you supported the communist party, and you made very clear that the former-Naxalites were now supporting a different communist party, but then when asked what you liked about their aims, beliefs or principles you could not articulate any political aims specific to the party you claim to have supported (AIR 47-48). Your claim to have been to meetings and give donations and generally supported the communist party, or the Naxalites, is internally inconsistent with information you were able to provide about what the party aimed to do. You were found to be internally inconsistent.
Additionally, you state you are not a member of any political party (AIR 49), this is internally inconsistent with the claim that the police would treat you as a member of the Naxalites (AIR 72).”
40. The Appellant was put on notice by the Refusal Decision that the Respondent disputed that he held his claimed political beliefs. There was therefore no unfairness in the Respondent relying on her case without expressly putting the issue of the Appellant’s disputed political beliefs to him in cross-examination. Requiring the Respondent to put her case to the Appellant in cross-examination would have been “an empty formality” (MR at [80]). Only an express concession by the Respondent could relieve the Judge of his duty to determine, on the evidence as a whole, the issues raised in the appeal (MR at [83]). There was no such concession here.
41. I am satisfied that the findings made by the Judge were open to him to make on the evidence before the Tribunal, and there is no error of law. It follows that I am not satisfied that Ground 1 is made out.
Ground 2: Failure to engage with / consider expert evidence
42. In QC (verification of documents; Mibanga duty) China [2021] UKUT 33 (IAC) (‘QC’) the Upper Tribunal, gave guidance on the proper approach to credibility assessment. The headnote of QC relevantly states:
“The Mibanga duty
(2) Credibility is not necessarily an essential component of a successful claim to be in need of international protection. Where credibility has a role to play, its relevance to the overall outcome will vary, depending on the nature of the case. What that relevance is to a particular claim needs to be established with some care by the judicial fact-finder. It is only once this is done that the practical application of the “Mibanga duty” to consider credibility “in the round” can be understood (Francois Mibanga v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 367). The significance of a piece of evidence that emanates from a third party source may well depend upon what is at stake in terms of the individual’s credibility.
(3) What the case law reveals is that the judicial fact-finder has a duty to make his or her decision by reference to all the relevant evidence and needs to show in their decision that they have done so. The actual way in which the fact-finder goes about this task is a matter for them. As has been pointed out, one has to start somewhere. At the end of the day, what matters is whether the decision contains legally adequate reasons for the outcome. The greater the apparent cogency and relevance of a particular piece of evidence, the greater is the need for the judicial fact-finder to show that they have had due regard to that evidence; and, if the fact-finder’s overall conclusion is contrary to the apparent thrust of that evidence, the greater is the need to explain why that evidence has not brought about a different outcome.”
43. I am not satisfied that the Judge erred in reaching conclusions adverse to the Appellant in relation to credibility and risk without proper engagement with the expert report. The Mibanga duty requires a judge to take expert evidence into account as part of the overall assessment rather than treating it as a mere check after credibility has already been determined. However, the nature and scope of the expert report is relevant to the weight it is given in making this overall assessment. Dr Smith’s report expressly states that it does not assess the credibility of the Appellant’s account. Dr Smith provided his opinion on risk on return, sufficiency of protection, and internal relocation, proceeding on the assumption that the Appellant’s account was true. As the Tribunal explained in QC, where an expert report has limited relevance to the credibility assessment because it accepts the appellant’s account and assesses risk on return based on this account, the Mibanga duty is not engaged to the same degree. I am satisfied that the Judge was not required to consider the findings of expert report in greater depth before reaching his adverse conclusions on the credibility of the Appellant’s account.
44. The Decision contains adequate reasons for the findings made, and there is no error of law. It follows that I am not satisfied that Ground 2 is made out.
Notice of Decision
45. The Decision of the First-tier Tribunal promulgated on 21 January 2026 which had dismissed the Appellant’s appeal did not involve the making of a material error of law and shall stand.

Linda Kirk

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

17 August 2026