Hodge Jones & Allen

19th April 2011

 

Hodge Jones & Allen civil liberties client Kishor Thakker is a British Citizen, of Indian ethnicity who has lived in UK for over 40 years.  He was imprisoned for 8 months, 24 days, for breach of an ASBO and was due to be released in April 2010 . On completion of his prison sentence, Mr Thakker was detained for a further three months in immigration detention, pending deportation to India, simply because the Home Office didn’t believe he was a UK citizen.

 

Being homeless, he had neither a passport, nor any utility bills, etc. to prove his identity.

 

The Home Office repeatedly delayed verification of his identity and treated his case in a non-urgent manner, every day of which he lay in fear of deportation, suffering anxiety and depression.

 

Mr Thakker left India when he was seven years old and doesn’t speak any language other than English.

 

Eventually, in July 2010 (almost exactly 3 months later) Mr Thakker was released with no explanation or apology. He has been awarded substantial damages for false imprisonment and aggravated damages (injury to feelings).  He declares it was never about the money but the principle and he does not want anyone else to go through what he has been through. He believes that the only basis of his being detained was that he didn’t ‘appear’ to be British. He is concerned that there may be many others who are treated in the same way who do not know their legal rights.

 

Sasha Barton, his lawyer, comments: “My client, Mr Thakker, suffered a serious and prolonged injustice. The Home Office had no lawful basis for detaining Mr Thakker after he served his prison sentence. Having detained him, officials simply did not prioritise investigating his citizenship with the urgency required by the situation - at times weeks went by with nothing being done to move matters forwards. The Home Office hasn’t formally admitted liability but the scale of damages indicates that it is guilty of serious wrongdoing.

 

This is not the first case we’ve acted in where a British citizen has been detained and threatened with deportation for the only apparent reason being that their ethnicity is not ‘White British’ and they cannot, because they are detained without necessary paperwork, prove their citizenship.”