Mujiati v. Torture Claims Appeal Board

HCAL 882/2019

[2023] HKCFI 324

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST No 882 of 2019

Application for Leave to Apply for Judicial Review

NOTIFICATION of the Judge’s decision (Ord 53 r 3)

Following:

	consideration of the documents only;            or
	consideration of the documents and oral submissions by (counsel for) the Applicant in open court / the Applicant being absent in open court;

Order by Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan:

Leave to apply for judicial review granted.

Observations for the Applicant:

1.The Applicant is a 49-year-old national of Indonesia who last arrived in Hong Kong on 15 August 2009 with permission to work as a foreign domestic helper until the expiration of her employment contract on 3 March 2011 or within 14 days of its early termination, but her employment was terminated on 19 November 2010 after she was arrested for theft, and for which she was subsequently convicted and was sentenced to 2 months’ imprisonment suspended for 12 months. The Applicant thereafter did not depart for Indonesia and instead overstayed in Hong Kong, and more than one year later on 2 February 2012 she was arrested by the Immigration Department for undertaking employment without permission, and for which she was again convicted and on this occasion sentenced to prison for 6 weeks. Upon her discharge from prison and being referred to the Immigration Department for deportation, the Applicant raised a torture claim on the basis that if she returned to Indonesia she would be harmed or killed by her father’s creditor for failing to settle her father’s outstanding debts, and after it was rejected by the Immigration Department, she then sought non-refoulement protection on the same basis. She was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of her claim.

2.The Applicant was born and raised in Sumber Dadad, Pucang Laban, Tulung Agung, Jawa Tirmur, Indonesia. After leaving school she married her husband who later passed away in 1995, whereupon she moved back home to reside with her parents where her father worked as a farmer for a wealthy land owner who provided his family with a little hut as their home.

3.As her mother was suffering from diabetes and mental problem which required expensive medications, and to meet such expenses the Applicant’s father had been borrowing money from a local loan shark who also ran a prostitution business in the village and with connections to the local police, and after her mother passed away in 1995, and whenever her father was late with his repayments, the loan shark would send men to his home to threaten and harass him, and on occasions even beat him by punching and kicking him, and although in 1996 her father made a report to the local police about the threats and assaults, the police just treated it as a private monetary dispute and refused to take any action against the loan shark.

4.In 2000 in order to assist her father with his loan repayments, the Applicant came to Hong Kong to work as a foreign domestic helper by remitting money from her monthly salary to her father for his loan repayments until 2002 when he passed away.

5.Thereafter whenever the Applicant returned to Indonesia for holidays, she did not return to her home village to avoid the loan shark, and instead stayed in her friend’s place in Jakarta.

6.In October 2007 when she again returned to Indonesia for holiday, and on this occasion she stayed in the place of her father’s friend Bambang in Panggung Pucung, Pucang Laban, Jawa Timur, but one day while Bambang was out, the loan shark came with 6 other persons to demand that the Applicant should be responsible for her father’s debts, and when she expressed her willingness to do so but could only pay by instalments by continuing with her job in Hong Kong, the loan shark took out the former loan agreement signed by her father and demanded that she signed on it in place of her father as the borrower of the loan in the presence of those 6 persons as witnesses, of whom the Applicant only recognized two of them as the village chiefs. After the Applicant had signed on the document in her father’s place as the borrower, and after those 6 persons also signified in the document as witnesses, they then left the premises.

7.Later on the same night the loan shark returned with 4 other unknown men and took the Applicant to an empty hut by the sea where they beat and raped her. On the following day those 4 men were gone leaving only the loan shark in the hut, and when the loan shark tried to attack her again, the Applicant managed to grab a bottle and hit it on his head, and when he fell onto the ground, the Applicant fled from the hut and sought help from Bambang who then gave her shelter in his home and tended to her injuries, and upon recovering therefrom she then returned to Hong Kong on 20 October 2007 to continue with her employment as a foreign domestic helper but without making any repayment to the loan shark despite their agreement.

8.However, later when her last employment was prematurely terminated in November 2010, the Applicant was afraid to return to Indonesia and therefore overstayed in Hong Kong, and upon her arrest by the Immigration Department she raised her torture claim, and after it was rejected by the Immigration Department, she then sought non-refoulement protection, for which she completed a Supplementary Claim Form (“SCF”) on 24 May 2018 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service (“DLS”).

9.In support of her claim, the Applicant also submitted through DLS several documents including the said loan transfer agreement which she signed in October 2007 (“Transference Letter of Debt”) and a document said to be certified by the local authorities of her account of events regarding her father’s loan and disputes with the loan shark (“Notification of Biography”).

10.By a Notice of Decision dated 29 June 2018 the Director of Immigration (“Director”) rejected the Applicant’s claim on all the remaining applicable grounds other than torture risk including risk of her absolute or non-derogable rights under the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, Cap 383 (“HKBOR”) being violated including right to life under Article 2 (“BOR 2 Risk”), risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under Article 3 of HKBOR (“BOR 3 Risk”), and risk of persecution with reference to the non-refoulement principle under Article 33 of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (“Persecution Risk”).

11.In his decision the Director took into account of all the relevant circumstances of the Applicant’s claim and found no substantial ground for believing that she would be in danger of being harmed or killed by her father’s creditor or his men upon her return to Indonesia due to the low intensity and frequency of past ill-treatment from them, that after all these years since she last left the country that it is doubtful that there would still be any adverse interest in her, that in any event it was a private monetary dispute between them without any official involvement that state or police protection would be available to the Applicant if resorted to, and that reliable and objective Country of Origin Information (“COI”) show that reasonable internal relocation alternatives are available in Indonesia with a large population of 260 million people spread across a vast territory of more than 1.9 million square kilometers that it would not be unduly harsh for the Applicant as an able-bodied adult with working experience to move to other part of the country away from her home district in large cities such as Jakarta where it would be difficult if not impossible for the loan shark to locate her.

12.On 13 July 2018 the Applicant lodged an appeal to the Torture Claims Appeal Board (“Board”) against the Director’s decision, and for which she attended an oral hearing on 11 December 2018 before the Board when she elected not to give further evidence after adopting those given earlier to the Director and contained in the appeal bundle as her evidence for her claim before the Board, and on 25 March 2019 her appeal was dismissed by the Board.

13.In its decision the Board found the documents submitted by the Applicant in support of her claim “too good to be true” as she appeared to be involved in their preparation in cooperation with the loan shark but without any evidence of how she fulfilled the responsibility on her father’s loan that she instead was using such transferred loan to support her claim for non-refoulement protection, that her assertion of not able to obtain any police protection was inconsistent with the official document Notification of Biography issued by the head of police of East of Java, that her claim of being raped by the loan shark on the same day after agreeing to be responsible for her father’s debts was inconsistent and not logical and served no purpose to the loan shark to recover the money lent to her father that it rejected those supporting documents as well as the Applicant’s claim of being harassed by the loan shark, and concluded that she has no genuine and substantial risk to her life in Indonesia that her claim form non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.

14.On 1 April 2019, the Applicant filed her Form 86 for leave to apply for judicial review of the Board’s decision, but no ground for seeking relief was given in her Form or in her supporting affirmation of the same date in which she just stated that she rejects the decision as it disregarded her dangerous situation in her home country but without providing any details or particulars as to how it did so, nor did she request any oral hearing for her application.

15.Nevertheless, given the seriousness of the issue at hand and the gravity of the consequences of the Board’s decision to dismiss the appeal, high standards of fairness require that the reasons or basis for the dismissal be scrutinized by the Court for any error of law or irrationality or procedural unfairness in such process.

16.As noted above, as the Applicant elected not to give any further evidence at her appeal hearing after adopting those given earlier to the Director and contained in the appeal bundle, the Board therefore proceeded to consider her claim on the basis of those material and information before it with reference to the relevant parts as cited in its decision ([15] – [55] of decision), and in concluding that the Applicant failed to substantiate her claim for non-refoulement protection, the Board essentially based on its following findings:

(a)  That those 2 documents submitted by the Applicant in support of her claim were in the circumstances of her case too good to be true; and

(b)  That her allegation of being abducted and raped by the loan shark and her escape from her captor were too dramatic and not credible.

17.Of the first of the 2 documents: Transference Letter of Debt, the Board first referred to the information provided by the Applicant to the Director as to the circumstances in which she signed the document at the demand of the loan shark in the presence of the 6 witnesses in [36] of its decision, and proceeded to make the following findings:

“37. This document appeared to be nicely prepared and quite formal containing all the details of how and why the loan occurred. It was typewritten, dated 13 October 2007 and signed and stamped by both parties, a “notary” and the five witnesses including the Village Head and Head of Neighbourhood.

38. If this document is read in conjunction with the circumstances in which it was signed, I find it too good to be true.”

18.It does not however appear to me which parts or what aspects of the circumstances as described in [36] that caused the Board to find the document “too good to be true”. Was it because the loan shark was able to find out that the Applicant was staying in Bambang’s house, or that he brought along 6 persons including 2 village chiefs and a notary as witnesses for the document, or that the Applicant would agree to take up the responsibility of repaying her father’s debts? The Board simply did not explain or elaborate at all in its decision.

19.As for the second document Notification of Biography, the Board also made similar findings as follows:

“39. This document was prepared by the Head of Police East of Java on paper bearing the letter head of “The Government of Tulungagung Regency Sub-District Pucanglaban, Village Head of Sumberdadap”. It was dated 2 February 2002 with five official chops. Very briefly, it certified the story that the loan shark was putting pressure to bear on the Petitioner and her father

40. I must say this was a very extraordinary document that certified the truth of the Petitioner’s story of the loan. It appeared to be an official document issued by the police but was also signed, among other people, by Sarbini the Village Head, who later witnessed the Transference Letter of Debt signed between the loan shark and the petitioner on 13 October 2007.

41. Again, in the same way of the last document produced by the Petitioner, I find this document too good to be true.”

20.Again the Board did not explain or clarify what made this document also “too good to be true”, or why it was a “very extraordinary” document to verify the truth of the Applicant’s story of the loan when it was her case that her father did in 1996 make a report of the threats from the loan shark over his loan to the local police, and hence it is not clear to me why it would be considered by the Board as so extraordinary for the police to subsequently certify the Applicant’s story on the basis of that report?

21.The Board then proceeded to refer to further information regarding these 2 documents in the Applicant’s Answers to Questions earlier raised by the Director as follows:

“42. Q72: “On 23 May 2013, you have submitted two supporting documents through the Duty Lawyer Service, namely ‘Transference Letter of Debt’ and ‘Letter from Village Head of Sumberdadap, Pucanglaban, Tulungagung’. How does these two documents relate to your claim of being tortured, apart from proving that you have owed money to Ujang?”

A72: “I wanted to prove that my story regarding the loan was true and I was scared something would happen again to me. I did not want to die like my father did. I am afraid if I returned to Indonesia I would be forced to enter prostitution.”

Q76: “What are your supplements?”

A76: “I know the names of the witnesses of my loan transference agreement. They were SISWANTO, SARBINI, MASHADI S.H., MUSLIKA, HARIYANTO and NUR. Among these 6 witnesses, SISWANTO and SARBINI were the village chief or LURAH and RT respectively. LURAH is a title for village chief and RT is also a title for a lowest administrative unit.” (RSI-1)

43. Earlier, from Q&A 38 to Q&A 40, the Petitioner said she did not know these people except “one chief of LURAH and one chief RT”. On this matter of knowledge of the witnesses”, I must bear in mind that the Petitioner had left home to come to Hong Kong in 2000. By giving the names of all her witnesses in 2013, the Petitioner seemed to say that she was in touch with some people of the village in which she used to live or she was given these names. In the latter case, she appeared to be involved in the preparation of these two documents and to be in cooperation with the loan shark who was said to be persecuting her. She was cooperative to the full satisfaction of the loan shark, I quote again.

Q42: “Why did you agree to replace the loan bearer’s name to your name?”

A42: “Because I wanted to take the responsibility.”

44. There was not a scintilla of evidence of how she fulfilled her responsibility on the loan she took up. Instead she was using such transferred loan to support her claim of non-refoulement protection.”

22.It seems from the above that the Board suspected the Applicant to have been involved in the preparation of the two documents in cooperation with the loan shark on the basis that she was able to name those 6 witnesses either because she had kept in touch with them since she left Indonesia and came to Hong Kong in 2000, or that she had been given those names as a result of her cooperation with the loan shark, when the simple fact is that she could have easily obtained their names from the said Transference Letter of Debts in which they were named as witnesses, while the Board also appeared to have made the assumption that the Applicant never intended to fulfill her responsibility on the loan which she took up in 2007 as she was just using such transferred loan to support her claim more than 5 years later in 2012 without any proper evidential basis.

23.The Board then proceeded to find the Applicant’s claim of being abducted and raped shortly after signing the said transfer of debt agreement very dramatic and incredible, and concluded that she has no genuine and substantial risk to life in Indonesia as follows:

“51. The Petitioner alleged that she was abducted and raped and then the loan shark wanted to kill her. These incidents occurred only a few hours after she had signed the “Transference Letter of Debt”. If these incidents were true, then what would be the purpose of having the Petitioner to take over the debt of her father formally in the presence of six dignitaries of the district in which both the loan shark and the Petitioner lived.

52. The Petitioner also alleged:

“I am also scared that if the loan shark catches me again, he will rape me again, or force me to become a prostitute to repay the loan, or simply sell me to another person.” (TCF, Answer, para 1)

53. It was very dramatic and must be with a bit of luck in the way the Petitioner escaped from her captor. She managed to go back to Bambang’s house and to hide there for two days. At that time, the Petitioner, who had been absent from home for seven years working in Hong Kong, stayed in Bambang’s house on holiday and, if what happened alter in Bambang’s house was true, as I pointed out earlier, it must be organized by Bambang and the Petitioner should have no chance of coming back to Hong Kong.

54. I have found that the “Transference Letter of Debt” together with the “Notification of Biography”, was too good to be true. In fact I will say they were specially made for the sole purpose of supporting the Petitioner’s claim for non-refoulement protection. I reject them and at the same time reject the Petitioner’s claim that she was “harassed” in 2007 by the loan shark who will continue to do so up to the present year of 2019 and thereafter.

55. I find the Petitioner has no genuine and substantial risk to life to face in Indonesia.”

24.Here the Board appeared to have made the assumption that by allowing the Applicant to stay in his house, it was Bambang who organized her subsequent abduction and raped by the loan shark and his men, and hence concluded that if what happened in the house were true, the Applicant would not have been able to leave Indonesia to return to Hong Kong, but from the materials and information available before the Board, I am unable to find any evidential basis for the Board to do so.

25.In UNHCR’s “Beyond Proof: Credibility Assessment in EU Asylum Systems”. May 2013, it is provided that credibility findings must be explained and supported by the evidence, and adverse credibility findings should not instead be based on unfounded assumptions or subjective speculations, as it so stated in p41:

“Credibility findings have to be explained and supported by the evidence. Where the determining authority finds a lack of credibility, there must be a basis or foundation in the evidence. This derives from the requirement that the assessment of the application must be individual, impartial, and objective. It finds further support in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which suggests that the assessment of credibility should be based on the examination of the statements and the documents submitted in support of the claim. The Court further indicated that the credibility of such statements should be questioned only where inconsistencies affect the core of the applicant’s story. Similarly, the Committee against Torture has stated that state authorities must be able to substantiate a finding that a claim is not credible.

Speculation occurs when a decision-maker reaches subjective conclusions without relying on supporting evidence. Adverse credibility findings should not be based on unfounded assumptions, subjective speculation, conjecture, stereotyping, intuition, or gut feelings. This has been explained in the following terms in national case law:

“4) The assessment of credibility […] must not be based on a perceived, correct instinct or gut feeling as to whether the truth is or is not being told. 5) A finding of lack of credibility must be based on correct facts, untainted by conjecture or speculation and the reasons drawn from such facts must be cogent and bear a legitimate connection to the adverse finding.

The decision-maker should therefore assess the credibility of the identified material facts by applying relevant credibility indicators.”

26.Moreover, in assessing the plausibility of an account, it should be based on its apparent likelihood or truthfulness in the context of the general country information and/or the claimant’s own evidence about what happened to him or her, as provided by the UK Home Office in its guidance “Asylum Policy Instruction: Assessing Credibility and Refugee Status”, 6 January 2015 at Section 5.6.4:

“Caseworkers must not base implausibility findings on their own assumptions, conjecture, or speculative ideas of what ought to have happened, what they might think “someone genuinely fleeing for their life” should have done, what ought to have been possible or not possible, or how “a genuine refugee” would have behaved, or how they think a third party would have acted in the circumstances.”

27.In Y v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1223, the UK Court of Appeal held that in regarding an account as incredible, the decision-maker must take care not to do so merely because it would not be plausible if it had happened in the UK, as underlying factors may well lead to behavior and responses on the part of the claimant which run counter to what would be expected; and as to the actions of others, it is not inconceivable, for example, that a guard might allow a detainee to escape, or a sympathizer provide assistance, even at the risk of punishment, as it will be important to explore the details and context of the escape or release at interview.

28.Such views and approach have been adopted by our courts, and in ST v Betty Kwan[2014] 4 HKLRD 277, the Court of Appeal in its considerations of particular relevance to screening torture claimants, emphasized that high standards of fairness require that an adjudicator to adopt an active role in screening a claim and to draw the claimant’s attention to matters which are material to the determination of his claim that require clarification or elaboration so that they can be addressed by the claimant, and identified the dangers of adopting personal assumptions, conjecture and speculations when assessing such claim:

“39. … high standards of fairness require the Director, or for that matter, the adjudicator to adopt an active role in screening a CAT claim. They are not permitted to simply sit back and put the torture claimant to strict proof of his claim. Depending on the facts, it may be appropriate for them to draw attention to matters that obviously require clarification or elaboration so that they can be addressed by the claimant. For instance, where it is readily apparent that something has gone amiss such as the proof documents in Prabakar that the applicant there had mentioned but was unable to produce and did not produce, or that a point has obviously been overlooked or missed out. On the other hand, there may be no duty to keep probing or inquiring where the objective circumstances make it reasonably clear that the applicant and those representing him are aware of what he has to show and has already produced or mentioned all that he wants to produce or mention. The exercise of determining whether a torture claim is valid is one of “joint endeavor”. Prabakar, para 54; TK v Jenkins [2013] 1 HKC 526, paras 21, 24 and 25…

40. Secondly, an adjudicator should ask himself whether there is anything in the claimant’s story, the evidence and information available, the legal issues raised, the arguments mounted, the decision of the Director, the written petition of the claimant, and so forth, which is material to the determination of the CAT claim, and which high standards of fairness would require the torture claimant to be given an opportunity to be heard orally (or further in writing), before a decision is made on the torture claim. For instance, if there is any point, factual or legal, that is troubling the adjudicator, which the adjudicator is not sure that an oral hearing or further submissions from the applicant cannot help answer or otherwise clarify, that is a strong pointer towards an oral hearing or (where appropriate) further written representations. An adjudicator simply cannot assume, no matter how good the legal representative of the torture claimant may be, that the legal representative (or for that matter, the torture claimant) would be able to foresee all the points that might be troubling the adjudicator after reading the petition and supporting material.

                        …

42. Another example is where the adjudicator is of the view that a certain factual or legal point is relevant to the determination in question which has not been dealt with adequately or at all in the petition. An obvious situation is where the adjudicator is aware of an important authority on a material point which has been omitted or touched on superficially only in the petition. This is all the more important if the authority is one against the torture claimant. But, even if the authority is in his favour, circumstances may be such that it should still be fairly drawn to the attention of the applicant so that he can, if he wishes, fully develop and make use of the authority and other related cases or matters to his advantage in pursuing his petition.

43. A further example is the situation where the material placed before the adjudicator calls for some further probing, questioning or inquiry as a matter of fairness. This is particularly so if the absence of such further probing, questioning or inquiry would mean the adjudicator’s drawing an inference adverse to the applicant by using common sense or his deciding the issue or even the entire CAT claim by reference only to the burden of proof. In screening a CAT claim, common sense may or may not be a reliable guide, depending, sometimes at least, on the circumstances prevailing in the foreign country or place concerned. What is “common” sense in Hong Kong could be “uncommon” sense in another place, and vice versa. As for deciding an issue or the CAT claim solely on the burden of proof, this should be regarded as a means of last resort given that the screening process is not an adversarial one, but one which is in the nature of a joint endeavor.”

29.In Y v SSHD, supra, Keene LJ made the same observations:

“25. There seems to me to be very little dispute between the parties as to the legal principles applicable to the approach which an adjudicator, now known as an immigration judge, should adopt towards issue of credibility. The fundamental one is that he should be cautious before finding an account to be inherently incredible, because there is a considerable risk that he will be over influenced by his own views on what is or is not plausible, and those views will have inevitably been influenced by his own background in this country and by the customs and ways of our own society. It is therefore important that he should seek to view an applicant’s account of events, as Mr Singh rightly argues, in the context of conditions in the country from which the appellant comes. The dangers were well described in an article by Sir Thomas Bingham, as he then was, in 1985 in a passage quoted by the IAT in Kasolo v SSHD 13190, the passage being taken from an article in Current Legal Problems. Sir Thomas Bingham said this:

‘An English judge may have, or think that he has, a shrewd idea of how a Lloyds Broker or a Bristol wholesaler, or a Norfolk farmer, might react in some situation which is canvassed in the course of a case but he may, and I think should, feel very much more uncertain about the reactions of a Nigerian merchant, or an Indian ships’ engineer, or a Yugoslav banker. Or even, to take a more homely example, a Sikh shopkeeper trading in Bradford. No judge worth his salt could possibly assume that men of different nationalities, educations, trades, experience, creeds and temperaments would act as he might think he would have done or even – which may be quite different – in accordance with his concept of what a reasonable man would have done.’ ”

30.In the present case, while the Applicant had elected not to give any further oral evidence in her appeal hearing before the Board, high standards of fairness required that the Adjudicator should have raised those issues as to the credibility of her account of being abducted and raped as well as those 2 documents as mentioned in the decision above with the Applicant at the hearing for her to respond, clarify or elaborate, or at least thereafter to invite her to do so in writing. The Adjudicator did not appear to have done either.

31.Furthermore, as also noted above, the Adjudicator appeared to have made various assumptions or speculations about the role of Bambang in the Applicant’s abduction and the Applicant’s relationship with those 6 witnesses named in the Transference Letter of Debts without any factual or evidential basis.

32.Moreover, given the way the Adjudicator rejected the credibility of the Applicant’s account of events and her supporting documents as simply “too good to be true”, it is in my view also reasonably arguable that in doing so the Adjudicator failed to give sufficient reasons for his such decision, as while they may not need to be elaborate, they must be sufficient to enable the Applicant to consider the possibilities of administrative review and judicial review: see Secretary for Security v Sakthevel Prabakar (2004) 7 HKCFAR 187 at para 51.

33.I should also note that in its capacity to determine an appeal/petition against the Director’s decision brought under Section 37ZR of the Immigration Ordinance, and in applying the provisions of its Schedule 1A, the Board is required to confirm or reverse the Director’s decision (s 23(1) of the Schedule), but somehow the Adjudicator in the present case in dismissing the Applicant’s appeal/petition did not appear to have confirmed the Director’s decision, and hence it is not known what his views were regarding the findings of the Director as to the availability of state protection or internal relocation to the Applicant upon her return to Indonesia, all the more relevant in this case given the nature of the alleged risk in the Applicant’s claim on the factual basis of her own case that in my view the Adjudicator should have proceeded to consider those issues notwithstanding his adverse finding against the Applicant on credibility.

34.In the premises, and for the reasons given, I am of the view that the Applicant’s intended application for judicial review of the Board’s decision is reasonably arguable on the grounds that (i) the Board erred in its assessment of the Applicant’s credibility in relying on unfounded assumptions or speculations about her claim; (ii) the Adjudicator failed to apply high standards of fairness for not raising those credibility issues with the Applicant at the hearing or to give her an opportunity thereafter to respond to them in writing; and (iii) the Board failed to give any or sufficient reasons for rejecting her claim on credibility, thus meeting the threshold for leave to be granted as laid down in Po Fun Chan v Winnie Cheung (2007) 10 HKCFAR 676.

35.Accordingly, I grant leave to the Applicant to apply for judicial of the Board’s decision on the grounds stated above, and direct that she shall file and issue the originating summons within 14 days of this decision, and to serve a copy thereof together with all the relevant documents on the Board as respondent and the Director as interested party.

Dated the 6^th day of February 2023.

Where leave to apply has been granted, Applicants and their legal advisers are reminded of their obligation to reconsider the merits of their application in the light of the Respondent’s evidence

Form CALL-1