SSIA v The Secretary of State for The Home Department

Facts

The appellant, a Bangladeshi national anonymised as S S I A, appealed against the Secretary of State for the Home Department's decision of 27 November 2024 refusing his protection and human rights claim. He had entered the United Kingdom in October 2022 on a student visa to study for an LLM and claimed asylum some nine months later. His case was that he had been an activist for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its student wing, Chhatra Dal, from 2014 onwards, that he had been arrested and beaten in 2019 and 2020, stabbed in an ambush by Awami League activists in March 2020, and falsely implicated in four criminal cases including a murder prosecution, all of which remained active. He said police had threatened to have the family land sold in July 2022, which he described as the trigger for his departure, and that he had continued BNP activity in Cardiff. He advanced a sur place claim of risk from rival BNP factions after the fall of Sheikh Hasina, relied on a psychiatric diagnosis of severe depression and generalised anxiety disorder under Article 3, and relied under Article 8 on an Islamic marriage and his claimed wife's pregnancy. The appeal was heard by video at Newport, the appellant being treated as a vulnerable witness.