The High Court has found legal errors in the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s assessment that an Indian applicant could relocate within India to avoid religious persecution. The court said the tribunal had not properly considered whether the applicant’s need to stop or conceal his beef-industry work to avoid harm could itself amount to persecution. It also found that evidence about risks to Muslims, including cow vigilantism, needed to be assessed cumulatively.
The applicant, an anonymised Muslim citizen of India, had been attacked in June 2017 by cow vigilantes who, according to the judgment, demanded that he stop trading in beef and convert to Hinduism. The tribunal accepted that he had suffered persecution linked to religion and that state protection was unavailable. It nevertheless found that he and his family could reasonably relocate to Delhi, Bangalore or Hyderabad, partly because he had substantial assets and could live without working or use his business skills in another industry.
The tribunal’s March 2021 decision followed an earlier judicial review. In October 2020, the High Court quashed the internal-protection part of the tribunal’s first decision and remitted that issue for reconsideration. The applicant then brought this second judicial review, seeking to quash the corresponding part of the reconsidered decision.
The respondents argued that the applicant was challenging a finding from the first decision that he would not return to the beef trade, and that the issue could no longer be raised. The court rejected that argument. It distinguished the applicant’s stated intention from the tribunal’s later reasoning that relocation was reasonable because he could refrain from that work or take another job. That reasoning appeared in the part of the second decision now under challenge, the judge held.
The court said the tribunal had not examined why the applicant would stop working in the beef industry or conceal his past work, or whether doing so out of fear of persecution would interfere with his rights to religious freedom and work so seriously that it could itself constitute persecution. The judge said that assessment belonged to the tribunal and could not be supplied by the court.
The judgment also criticised the tribunal’s treatment of country information. Evidence about discrimination against Muslims and widespread cow vigilantism had to be considered together when assessing whether relocation was reasonable, even where some evidence might carry little weight for this applicant personally. The court found the tribunal had not adequately addressed cow vigilantism across India in that cumulative assessment.
The court concluded that the internal-protection decision was unsustainable in law. It directed the tribunal, on reconsideration, to examine the reasons for the applicant’s proposed change of work and concealment, the possible impact on his rights, and the full relevant country information. The judgment leaves the ultimate relocation assessment to the tribunal. The judge said the parties would be heard on the appropriate formal orders; the source does not record those orders.