1835160 (Refugee)

This matter concerned an application for a protection visa by a citizen of India. The applicant claimed that if returned to India, his life would be at risk due to significant gambling debts owed to gangsters, threats received, and harassment of his family. He also asserted that Indian authorities were corrupt and unable to protect him, and that he could not relocate to a safer area within India due to his family's limited connections and the gangsters' ability to track him. The applicant had arrived in Australia on a student visa, which was subsequently cancelled, and he became an unlawful non-citizen before being placed in immigration detention.

The court was required to determine whether the applicant had a well-founded fear of persecution for one or more of the five prescribed reasons under section 5J(1) of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth). Alternatively, the court had to consider whether there were substantial grounds for believing that, as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of his removal to India, the applicant faced a real risk of suffering significant harm, as defined by section 36(2)(aa) and elaborated in sections 36(2A) and (2B) of the Act. In making its determination, the Tribunal was mandated to consider relevant policy guidelines and country information assessments.

The Tribunal affirmed the delegate's decision not to grant the protection visa. The reasoning focused on the applicant's failure to establish a well-founded fear of persecution under section 36(2)(a) of the Act. Crucially, the Tribunal found that the applicant had not demonstrated that the alleged persecution would be for one of the five specified reasons, nor that effective protection measures were unavailable in India. Furthermore, the Tribunal concluded that the applicant had not met the criteria for complementary protection under section 36(2)(aa), as he had not established a real risk of suffering significant harm. The Tribunal noted that the applicant did not satisfy the criterion in section 36(2) on the basis of being a member of the same family unit as a person who held a protection visa.

Consequently, the Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the applicant a protection visa.