KS v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

Facts

The appellant, KS, is a citizen of Tajikistan who left his country on 24 July 2021 and travelled to Russia, where he lived and worked on construction sites for a year. He obtained a temporary work visa for the United Kingdom, arriving on 26 July 2022 to work on a fruit farm. His visa expired on 4 January 2023, and after lodging his passport at the Polish Embassy in connection with a planned move to Poland and receiving no outcome, he claimed asylum; the claim is recorded as made on 23 January 2023. He said he feared return because of a romantic but non-physical relationship, conducted over some three years through secret meetings by a river, with a girl from his school, discovered when her family found a letter he had written proposing they run away together. He said he was beaten by her brother and fled, and that her influential family — her father runs a mine, her brother is in the border force — would kill him. He also said police raided his home and found a banned religious book in his bedroom, that his father and brother were detained and questioned, and that a police summons was issued on 20 May 2023. The Secretary of State refused the protection claim on 17 April 2024, accepting identity and nationality but not credibility, and he appealed, also relying on Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention.