Date: 19990429
Docket: IMM-2894-98
Between :
ANIL EARY, GAGAM EARY, and SHASHI EARY,
domiciled and residing at 8680 Bloomfield,
apartment 1, Montreal, Quebec, H3N 2J3,
Applicants
- and -
THE MINISTER, c/o Justice Department, Guy Favreau Complex,
200 West René-Lévesque, East Tower, 5th Floor,
Montreal, Quebec, H2Z 1X4,
Respondent
REASONS FOR ORDER
PINARD, J. :
[1] The applicants, Anil Eary, his wife Shashi Eary and their son Gagam Eary, citizens of India, seek judicial review of a decision of the Refugee Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board (the Board) dated May 11, 1998, in which the Board rejected their claim for refugee status on the grounds of imputed political opinion.
[2] The principal applicant alleged that he had three different encounters with militants between September 1996 and March 1997, after which he was arrested by police, detained, beaten and tortured. He also alleged that militants had killed his father and that his wife was beaten, tortured and raped by the police. The applicants, who are Hindu, arrived in Canada on June 24, 1997.
[3] The Board members rejected the applicants' claim for reasons of credibility and because they believed the documentary evidence could allow them to conclude that the applicants had no objective basis for their alleged fear.
[4] The finding that the applicants' story was not credible was based fundamentally on the perception of a number of implausibilities which were, in my opinion, reasonably explained. In such a context, the Board's failure to refer to cogent evidence of mistreatment when it omitted to state in clear and unmistakable terms why it doubted the medical reports submitted by the applicants, together with the Board's failure to address the issues of the principal applicant's father's death at the hands of militants and the rape of his wife, constitute reviewable errors which justify the intervention of this Court.
[5] Consequently, the application for judicial review is granted, the decision of the Board set aside, and the matter remitted for rehearing by a differently constituted panel.
JUDGE
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
April 29, 1999