Docket: IMM-8830-23
Citation: 2026 FC 195
Ottawa, Ontario, February 10, 2026
PRESENT: Madam Justice Conroy
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BETWEEN: |
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RAYHAN HUSSAIN |
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Applicant |
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and |
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THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION |
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Respondent |
JUDGMENT AND REASONS
[1] The Applicant, Mr. Rayhan Hussain, seeks judicial review of a decision of the Refugee Appeal Division [RAD] dismissing his appeal of a negative refugee determination by the Refugee Protection Division [RPD].
[2] The Applicant fears persecution in Bangladesh from the Awami League and their affiliates. The RPD found the Applicant’s claims of persecution credible and the RAD did not disturb this finding. Both the RPD and the RAD found the determinative issue was the existence of an internal flight alternative [IFA] in a city in Bangladesh.
I. Background
[3] The Applicant is a citizen of Bangladesh. His father is a supporter of a political party that opposed the Awami League, the ruling party at the relevant time.
[4] It is not disputed that, in 2017, the Applicant, his father, and his brother endured persecution by affiliates of the Awami League. This persecution included death threats against the family, extortion, beatings, vandalism of the father’s business, and the Applicant’s abduction at gunpoint, during which he was held for ransom. The police refused to act on complaints made by the family due to the perpetrators’ affiliation with the ruling party. The perpetrators also threatened to file a false criminal complaint against the Applicant and to kill his father and brother should the police complaints not be withdrawn.
[5] In late October 2017, the Applicant went into hiding away from his hometown. While there, he was recognized by someone affiliated with the Awami League, who made inquiries about him. He then moved to another village. During this time, his father and brother were again attacked, following which they also went into hiding.
[6] On November 3, 2017, the Applicant fled Bangladesh.
[7] On August 8, 2018, a First Information Report [FIR] was filed with the police against the Applicant, his father and his brother. The FIR was filed by the leader of an Awami League affiliate who had been persecuting the family. It falsely alleged the Applicant and his family members had committed a crime.
[8] On August 28, 2018, the Applicant learned that his brother had passed; his body was found in a village pond.
[9] On June 23, 2019, a chargesheet was filed by the police against the Applicant and his father; the Applicant’s brother was not included, as he was deceased by that time.
[10] On December 1, 2020, pursuant to the August 2018 FIR, an arrest warrant was issued for both the Applicant and his father.
[11] The Applicant’s mother fled to another area in Bangladesh and his father fled to India in 2020.
II. RPD Determination
[12] The RPD found that the Applicant provided credible testimony and accepted that the agents of persecution targeted he and his father as alleged. However, the RPD found that the Applicant had a viable IFA in a city in Bangladesh.
[13] On the first prong of the IFA test, the Applicant testified the police had become part of the agents of persecution and would find him. He pointed to false criminal case filed against him, his father and his late brother and relied on the letter from his family lawyer and the documents it attached, the FIR, the chargesheet, and the arrest warrant against him.
[14] The RPD concluded that the agents of harm lacked the motivation to pursue the Applicant in the proposed IFA. While the panel accepted that the agents of harm had inquired after the Applicant’s whereabouts in October 2017 and early 2018, it noted that, at the time of the hearing, it had already been four years since the Applicant departed Bangladesh. The RPD found that, given the absence of any inquiries since early 2018, including those made through the Applicant’s mother, there was “insufficient evidence establishing that the…agents of harm recently enquired of him, on a balance of probabilities.”
[15] Regarding the means to locate the Applicant in the proposed IFA, the RPD found that the objective evidence in the National Document Package [NDP] did not support the conclusion that a FIR constituted a means through which he could be found in the proposed IFA. The RPD concluded that, because there is no national database for FIRs or other charging documents, there was insufficient evidence establishing the existence of a means through which the police in one jurisdiction or city would come to know the Applicant’s location across the country. Therefore, even assuming the police would be motivated to find the Applicant outside of his home district, the panel found that the unconnected nature of inter-jurisdictional police communications in Bangladesh negated any such attempt.
III. RAD Determination (Decision under Review)
[16] The Applicant appealed the RPD’s negative decision to the RAD, arguing that its assessment under the first prong of the IFA analysis was flawed. The Applicant’s appeal was dismissed by the RAD on June 27, 2023.
[17] The Applicant argued, amongst other things, that the trajectory of the false criminal proceedings –from the initial complaint in 2018 through to the filing of the FIR, the chargesheet, and the arrest warrant issued in 2020 covering a period of 2 years – demonstrated an ongoing motivation by the agents of persecution. He asserted that the agents of persecution were using the false case to get the police to locate the Applicant and his father.
[18] The RAD concluded that the RPD did not err in its IFA analysis.
[19] With respect to motivation, the RAD found that it was open to the RPD to consider the passage of time because the last instance where the agents of harm directly targeted the Applicant was in October 2017 and that the Applicant had not disclosed more recent evidence that the agents of persecution were actively pursuing him.
[20] On the question of means, the RAD was not persuaded by the Applicant’s arguments that the RPD misinterpreted the NDP evidence on charging documents. The RAD’s reasons on this issue state, in part:
Concerning arrest warrants, the RIR states that in Bangladesh, they are used to arrest wanted persons outside the originating jurisdiction of the warrant at the request of the police in the place where the warrant was first issued.
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The Appellant’s submissions on this point have not persuaded me the RPD erred in finding “the [Appellant’s] name is unlikely to appear in any databased [sic] that would trigger inter-regional police cooperation.” In fact, the content of the RIR supports a finding the Appellant would be pursued by police in [the IFA] only if the police who issued the warrant were motivated to make inquiries after him in the IFA location.
IV. Issue and Standard of Review
[21] The sole issue for determination is whether the RAD’s finding, that the agents of persecution lacked the motivation to pursue the Applicant in the IFA, was reasonable.
[22] The standard of review is reasonableness: Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 at paras 10, 23, and 25.
V. Analysis
[23] I conclude that the RAD’s decision was unreasonable. It was not responsive to a central argument made by the Applicant, namely whether the pursuit of the false criminal case demonstrated an ongoing motivation to locate the Applicant.
[24] The RAD finds that “there is no concrete objective evidence of the state authorities actively pursuing the Appellant based on any of these documents [the FIR, chargesheet and arrest warrant]”
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[25] Respectfully, this conclusion misses the point: the assertion is that the pursuit of the false criminal case, starting in August 2018 and culminating with the arrest warrant in 2020, is itself objective and concrete evidence of ongoing motivation past October 2017. The Applicant submits that the agents of persecution were using the police through a false criminal case to locate him.
[26] At no point in its reasons does the RAD squarely address this argument.
[27] It may be that upon considering the Applicant’s argument and assessing the evidence, the RAD rejects that the pursuit of the false criminal case is sufficient to demonstrate ongoing motivation. But the requirement for responsive justification mandates that the reasons grapple with this central argument raised by the Applicant head-on: Vavilov at paras 127–128. The RAD’s failure to do so renders the decision unreasonable.
[28] The RAD’s failure to consider a central argument on the motivation of the agents of persecution undermines the RAD’s conclusion on the means. Its determination on means rested, in part, on its determination that there was a lack of motivation.
[29] Accordingly, the decision ought to be set aside.
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