Pakistani Christian Asylum Seeker Awarded Rs 1 Crore After Alleged Mistreatment By UK Officials

An asylum seeker has been awarded 100,000 Pounds (Rs 1,08,77,180) by the Home Office after alleging she was "treated like a criminal" for overstaying in the UK, according to The Guardian. When Nadra Almas came to Britain in 2004 on a student visa from Pakistan, she said she was unable to go back because she would be persecuted and mistreated for her Christian faith.

Officials from the Home Office handcuffed and detained Almas in 2018 and told her  she was going to be flown back to Pakistan. But two weeks later, she was freed. The British government prohibited her from working or receiving benefits for over three years before granting her refugee status.

Almas had sued the Home Office of the UK government for unlawful detention and won the case.

According to The Guardian, Almas told officials she feared for her safety as a Christian should she be returned to Pakistan, and did not want to be separated from her adult son, who had secured refugee status a few weeks before.

After release, Almas claimed asylum and was granted refugee status in 2021. But during the two years and nine months she waited for a decision, she was placed under conditions that she said "made her feel like a criminal" and breached her right to family life under the Human Rights Act.

Recorder McNeill told the court: 'She could not travel, she could not move freely, she could not develop her private and family life because her status was uncertain, and she could not work or claim public funds and had to rely on the little support from the asylum system.

'She was wholly unable to work and her home life was affected by the anxiety she felt following her period of detention, feeling like a criminal and not a good person with her friends and family because she had been detained.'

According to The Metro, the court also heard that during her two-week detention, Ms Almas was 'handcuffed and detained, imprisoned in a room with two men she did not know and told she was going to be flown back to Pakistan'.

After the court decided that Almas' conditions violated her human rights, she was later given 98,757.04 pounds in in compensation.