A 91-year-old grandmother born in British India in 1929 has finally been allowed to come and live permanently in the UK after a 14-year-old battle with the Home Office.
In a statement to the iNews, Vasanta Rao shared, “After my husband died I was all alone. My children and their families are all in the UK, so I felt extremely lonely in India. It was like a life sentence and I very much wanted to be here. I was born in British India, read English literature, speak English very well, there should have been no problem with me.”
The application for indefinite leave to remain was first rejected in 2006 leading her daughters – both senior physicians in the NHS – to grow increasingly worried about their parents’ health.
According to the publication every other application for a six-month visiting visa took much longer than previously to be approved. A 10-year multi-entry visa was later rejected with no explanation and no refund given. A two-year multi-entry visa was granted instead.
An indefinite leave to remain visa application was rejected again in 2019 while Mrs Rao was visiting the UK. The family then decided to fight the Home Office in court. At the first-tier tribunal hearing in Birmingham last year, the Home Office case officer told the judge that Mrs Rao was “technologically ‘savvy’, had friends in Bangalore and she had had domestic help in the past”. The case officer then argued that that Mrs Rao “had used deception to enter the UK as her daughter had confirmed that it was her intention not to return”.
Dr Pratibha Bahal, a consultant paediatrician at Kettering General Hospital further told i, said, “I thought that was utterly reprehensible, completely not on. I’ve worked my socks off in the NHS for 35 years yet this was the way we were treated. The truth is that we acted on legal advice given, in both the timing and category of the application. Also, we were concerned that if she applied for indefinite leave to remain from India and was refused, mum may have not have even been granted a visitor’s visa, as has been the experience of a number of families in similar circumstances.”
There have been consistent campaigns by leading professional medical bodies including British Medical Association and the British Indian Nurses Association (BINA) which are pressing the government for an urgent review into the immigration rules surrounding Adult Dependent Relatives.
