Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-003915
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/61174/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 16th of October 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE JARVIS

Between

SM
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr S. Karim, Counsel instructed by Liberty Legal Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms A. Nolan, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 6 October 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the Appellant (and any member of his family) are 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 (and/or his family). Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court. This order is made due to the international protection issues in the appeal.

DECISION AND REASONS

Introduction
1. The Appellant has appealed, with permission from the First-tier Tribunal (granted on 15 July 2026), against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Revill (hereafter ‘the Judge’), promulgated on 9 April 2026.
Relevant background
2. Turning to the decision, the Judge firstly refused the Respondent’s application for an adjournment on the basis of an ongoing shortage of Presenting Officers and external counsel. At §8 the Judge recorded that the Respondent had not made the application for an adjournment in the proper way and refused the application at §13 after Mr Rahman had opposed the adjournment request on behalf of the Appellant.
3. Furthermore, the Judge recorded a preliminary discussion with Mr Rahman in which she raised with him the recent news that the Bangladesh National Party (‘the BNP’) had recently won the general elections in Bangladesh. Mr Rahman confirmed from his own knowledge that the Judge’s understanding was accurate and agreed that she should have regard to the outcome of the elections when determining the appeal and, importantly, did not seek an adjournment to produce additional evidence on the point (§15).
4. Additionally, the Judge decided that the Respondent’s position in the review (which in her judgment appeared to resile from the earlier concession that the Appellant would not receive a sufficient level of protection on return to Bangladesh) was not a properly made application for permission to withdraw the concession. The Judge therefore decided that it was appropriate to proceed on the basis that the concession remained in place (§16).
5. In respect of her substantive findings, the Judge concluded the following:
a) The Appellant was a member of the Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal (‘the JCD’) and was attacked with hockey sticks in 2022 by members of the Chhatra League (‘the CL’) in retaliation for an earlier incident in which the Appellant and his colleagues had outnumbered them when they had tried to disrupt a JCD event (§30).
b) The Judge also rejected the Respondent’s challenge to the Appellant’s credibility based on the content of his visa application form (§33); she also concluded that the delay in making the asylum claim between 15 January 2023 and March 2023 was relatively modest and did not damage his credibility (§34).
c) At §36 the Judge noted the recent political changes in Bangladesh but concluded that the CL members who targeted the Appellant did not apparently do so in any official capacity on behalf of either the CL or the Awami League. The Judge concluded that the individuals who attacked the Appellant did so out of personal animosity albeit linked to his and their respective political allegiances.
d) In the same paragraph the Judge recorded that the Appellant had left his home area because he understood that there was a plan to attack him and his colleagues indicating that the animosity towards him continued at that time. The Judge therefore concluded that the fact that the Awami League was no longer in power did not mean that it ceased to have supporters nor that those supporters ceased to harbour resentment towards the Appellant.
e) The Judge accepted the Appellant’s evidence that he had relocated away from his home area from June 22 onwards (§40).
f) The Judge furthermore saw no real force in the Respondent’s contention that the Appellant would not have been able to leave Bangladesh on his own passport (because of the ongoing political enmity) on the basis that the Appellant had never alleged that there was an arrest warrant against him (§41).
g) The Judge otherwise decided that the length of time since the attack against the Appellant was not sufficient to show that those who previously persecuted him no longer wished to do so should he return to the area (§42).
h) In respect of sufficiency of protection, the Judge reverted to the Respondent’s concession in the refusal letter (which she decided had not been properly withdrawn) and concluded that the Appellant could not receive the required level of protection from the Bangladeshi authorities (§43).
i) In respect of internal relocation, the Judge concluded that the Appellant had not claimed that the individuals with whom he had had difficulties were high profile or senior within the Awami League or CL, nor that they had any influence on a national level. The Judge concluded that the tensions between the Appellant and those members of the CL were correspondingly localised and confined to those individuals and did not extend to the Awami League or CL as a whole (§44).
j) In coming to the conclusion that the risk to the Appellant did not extend beyond his home area, the Judge drew upon the fact that the Appellant had been able to remain in Sylhet for several months without being found. The Judge concluded that even if the Appellant had been in hiding, he would have been located if the party had been actively seeking him out when they were in power (§45).
k) In respect of the changing country circumstances, the Judge concluded that the BNP’s election victory meant that the ability of the Appellant’s would-be persecutors to locate him had been further curtailed as the Awami League no longer had control of Bangladesh and its borders (§46).
l) The Judge further concluded that it would not be unreasonable for the Appellant to internally relocate and that he would be able to express his political views elsewhere as the BNP is now in power (§47).
The error of law hearing
6. I heard helpful oral submissions from both representatives at the error of law hearing of which I have kept my own note, and at the end of the hearing I formally reserved my judgment. I am grateful to Mr Karim for the succinct way in which he particularised the pleaded grounds into four points.
7. In respect of ground 1, Mr Karim referred to paragraph 4 of the grant of permission document and emphasised that the Judge had failed to make clear findings on the likelihood of members of the CL (as nonstate actors) being able to locate him in another area of the country as private individuals. Mr Karim argued that the Judge had not given any meaningful thought to whether the CL could target the Appellant as a nationwide organisation.
8. As to the second ground, Mr Karim submitted that the Judge’s conclusion (at §44) that the dispute with the members of the CL was a localised issue was not in conformity with: 1) the conclusion that the Appellant had been attacked because of his political affiliation; 2) that the Appellant believed that they operated throughout Bangladesh; 3) that he was in hiding for several months and 4) that he feared that he could be traced by these people through political networks. Mr Karim added that the Judge had failed to identify any country evidence that the CL influence was only localised or that they lacked the means to locate political opponents in other parts of Bangladesh, especially in light of the Appellant’s evidence at paragraph 11 of his witness statement.
9. In respect of ground 3 Mr Karim argued that the Judge had conflated state power and non-state actor capability: he criticised the Judge for relying heavily on the fall of the Awami League (at §46) as being inconsistent with the accepted fact that the Appellant’s attackers were non-state actors motivated by personal and political reasons. Mr Karim asserted that the Judge’s conclusion (at §36) did not explain why the change of government would affect the motivation of the CL in respect of the desire to trace the Appellant using local or national networks. In effect he argued that there was material inconsistency between §36 and §46 through an assumption of diminished power.
10. Finally, Mr Karim argued that the Judge, although she had made reference to paragraph 339K of the Immigration Rules at §38, had not in fact clearly identified cogent reason for concluding that the accepted past persecution was not a sufficiently serious indication of an ongoing risk across Bangladesh. Mr Karim emphasised that the Appellant had left his home area for Sylhet because of the CL’s intended reprisals and onward hostility.
11. In response Ms Nolan characterised Mr Karim’s grounds as pure disagreement with the decision and emphasised the need for the Upper Tribunal to read the First-tier Tribunal decision as a whole. Ms Nolan responded to the grounds as articulated by Mr Karim and in final response Mr Karim emphasised two further points.
Findings and reasons
12. I start by noting that there has been no cross-appeal by the Respondent to the Judge’s conclusion that the Respondent’s review was not sufficient to constitute a proper withdrawal of the concession made at paragraph 18 of the refusal letter in the absence of a particular application. I therefore did not hear argument as to whether the Judge was correct as a matter of law to suggest that there were some other formal application procedure that should have been followed by the Respondent in circumstances where she had plainly laid out the material changes in country conditions in the review dated from June 2025.
13. In this case the Judge found herself in the somewhat unusual situation of concluding that there would not be a sufficiency of protection at the date of the hearing based on the Respondent’s concession (made well before the change in circumstances in Bangladesh arising from the resignation of Sheik Hasina in August 2024) but then considering the change of circumstances at the date of the hearing when considering the question of internal relocation, as it had not been subject to any previous concession by the Respondent.
14. Ultimately, I accept the Respondent’s submission that the Judge did not materially err in her assessment of the first step of the internal relocation consideration: whether there was a part of Bangladesh that the Appellant could safely relocate to before then assessing whether such relocation was reasonable/unduly harsh.
15. Ground 1 – in my view the Judge did not materially err when concluding that the Appellant’s issues with the CL were a localised phenomenon. I find that the Judge was entitled to draw the conclusion that this was a local matter from the Appellant’s own account including the fact that he was able to relocate to Sylhet without problems for a number of months. It is relevant to note that the Appellant has not challenged the Judge’s conclusion at §45 that he would have been located by the authorities in Sylhet if he had been sought by the party as a whole during that period of time.
16. I conclude that even if the Judge was referring to the Awami League itself then the rationale would equally apply to the student branch of that organisation absent good reason to think otherwise.
17. Furthermore, a considerable difficulty with the appeal before the First-tier (and indeed the Upper Tribunal) is the absence of any contemporary country evidence. As the Respondent has pointed out, the Appellant’s evidence bundle contained only a few reports from the 2018-2022 period (apart from a link in the witness statement at paragraph 11 to an FCO advice document) despite the appeal being heard in March 2026, and the Respondent putting the Appellant on notice of her reliance upon the change in country conditions (and her country evidence document from December 2024) in the June 2025 review.
18. The burden ultimately rested upon the Appellant to make good his claim at the lower standard that there was a real risk of ongoing enmity from members of the CL in his home area extending across Bangladesh despite the Awami League losing power in August 2024.
19. The Judge properly notified Appellant’s Counsel that she would be taking into account that the BNP had won the 2026 general election, and he indicated no objection to that course of action and did not ask for an adjournment.
20. I therefore find that the Judge was entitled to reach the conclusion on the evidence before her that the Appellant could reasonably relocate to another part of Bangladesh which was safe, as per AS (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 873 at §61(1).
21. For similar reasons I see no real force in ground 2. The Judge gave sufficient reason for finding that the particular enmity in this case was personalised and localised. Furthermore, the Appellant’s evidence in the witness statement at paragraph 11 was simply his view of reported country condition changes which 1) dated from January 2025 at the latest; 2) were not in fact evidenced in his bundle and 3) was not up-to-date by reference to, at least, the outcome of the general election in February 2026.
22. There is no merit in ground 3 – as I have outlined above, the burden was upon the Appellant to establish by reference to evidence (rather than assertion) what kind of networks the CL have presently, or at least what can be inferred from the current evidence, as well as the likely ability of the CL (or the particular individuals with whom the Appellant clashed as private individuals) to locate someone in another part of Bangladesh. The Judge’s findings were open to her on the evidence available in this particular appeal.
23. I find no error in the Judge’s reasoning by reference to the challenge in ground 4. I conclude that the Judge properly directed herself to the requirement in para. 339K and concluded that there was an ongoing risk of persecution in the home area (§42).
24. The Judge’s later findings in respect of the safety and reasonableness of internal relocation were entirely open to her and sufficient reason was given for those conclusions.

Notice of Decision
The Appellant’s appeal against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal is dismissed.

I Jarvis

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

15 October 2026