Amargit Singh Bila v Secretary of state for the home department
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 03 November 1993 |
| Date | 03 November 1993 |
| Court | Court of Session |
Inner House of the Court of Session
The Lord Justice Clerk Lord Morison, Lord Sutherland
M Bovey for the petitioner
Miss S J O'Brien for the respondent
Cases referred to in the judgment:
R v Governor of Pentonville Prison ex parte FernandezWLRUNK [1971] 1 WLR 987: [1971] 2 All ER 691.
Bugdaycay and ors v Secretary of State for the Home DepartmentELR [1987] 1 AC 514: [1987] Imm AR 250.
Sivakumaran and ors v Secretary of State for the Home DepartmentELR [1988] AC 958: [1988] Imm AR 147.
Amargit Singh Bila v Secretary of State for the Home Department (unreported, CS, 28 October 1992).
Political asylum illegal entrant claimed political asylum when discovered in United Kingdom, ten years after entry Secretary of State refused to grant asylum whether refusal reasonable whether Secretary of State entitled to take against the applicant the fact that he had not claimed asylum on arrival but only after arrest. HC 251 paras. 98, 140: United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees (1951) Protocol (1967) arts. 1, 33.
Appeal from the judgment of Lord Prosser in which he had dismissed an application for judicial review of the decision of the Secretary of State to refuse political asylum to the petitioner. The petitioner was a citizen of India, a Sikh who entered the United Kingdom illegally. When, some ten years later, he was discovered and detained, and the Secretary of State indicated he would be removed to India, the petitioner claimed asylum.
The Secretary of State refused the application on the merits; in his reasons, he referred adversely to the fact that no application for asylum had been made until ten years after the petitioner's arrival, and only when he had been detained. Albeit on the facts his application before Lord Prosser was dismissed, the learned judge appeared to conclude that it was not reasonable for the Secretary of State to take that point against the petitioner.
The petitioner appealed.
Held
1. On the facts, the Secretary of State's decision was not unreasonable.
2. It was not necessary to decide the point, but obiter, the Secretary of State was entitled to take the circumstances of the late application into account in assessing the bona fides of the claim.
Lord Morison: This is a reclaiming motion against an interlocutor of the Lord Ordinary dated 28 October 1992 in which he dismissed the reclaimer's petition for judicial review of a decision of the Home Secretary to refuse the petitioner political asylum. The petitioner is an Indian citizen and a Sikh. He was born in the Punjab but left India in 1977. In 1979 he entered the United Kingdom where he remained until 7 December 1989 on which date he was detained by immigration officers while he was working in a Glasgow restaurant. He accepts that he is an illegal entrant to the United Kingdom, an expression which is defined by section 33 of the Immigration Act 1971 as a person unlawfully entering or seeking to enter in breach of a deportation order or of the immigration laws, and, as including a person who has so entered. As an illegal entrant he is, subject to the provisions of that Act, liable to detention and removal from the United Kingdom to the country of his nationality. On the day following his detention he applied to the Home Office for political asylum, and this application was supplemented by a letter dated 11 December 1989 from his solicitors which inter alia stated that he had a well-founded fear of persecution if he returned to India on the grounds of his ethnic group. The letter also referred to problems generally affecting Sikhs in the Punjab, to the alleged murder of the applicant's brother in 1983 which he believed happened simply because his brother was a Sikh, and to an incident which took place in the Golden Temple in which two of his cousins were killed, although they were not politically involved. The Golden Temple incident was one in which in 1984 at Amritsar Government forces carried out an attack on the temple which was occupied by Sikhs.
The Secretary of State dealt with the application initially by a letter from the Immigration and Nationality Department dated 1 June 1990, which was in the following terms:
Dear Mr Singh
You have applied for asylum in the United Kingdom on the grounds that you have a well-founded fear of persecution in India for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
India has in recent years experienced considerable disorder which the authorities have had to take measures to control. As a result of this disorder individuals of all groups have...
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Ruslanus Irzekevikius For Judicial Review Of Decisions Of The Secretary Of State For The Home Department, A Special Adjudicator And The Immigration Ap V.
...of delay is supported by Rule 341 of the Immigration Rules. In Amargit Singh Bila v Secretary of State for the Home Department [1994] Imm AR 130 that approach was upheld and Lord Morison said (at 135): "... the reclaimer did not seek asylum until after his apprehension which occurred 10 yea......