Muzzana Munir Baloch, R (on the application of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

In judicial review of a decision that further representations do not amount to a fresh asylum claim, the question is whether the Secretary of State irrationally concluded, applying anxious scrutiny, that the new material together with material already considered created no realistic prospect of success before a First-tier Tribunal.

The applicant ordinarily bears the primary responsibility for presenting and verifying her own case. The Secretary of State is not required to make it for her. A decision-maker may give weight to an earlier adverse determination and to unexplained late production, provenance and reliability concerns affecting documents relied upon as fresh evidence.

The applicant, a Pakistani national, sought judicial review of decisions in October 2011 refusing to treat her further representations as a fresh claim and maintaining her proposed removal.

Her earlier asylum appeal had been dismissed. She subsequently submitted documents, photographs and other material intended to show that she was married to a different man from the husband named in her genuine Pakistani passport, and that she faced domestic violence on return. The Secretary of State considered that the material did not create a realistic prospect of success before a First-tier Tribunal.

Permission for judicial review was granted on the arguable issue of whether the cumulative effect of the documents had received anxious scrutiny. The central issue was whether the fresh-claim decisions were irrational or otherwise affected by public-law error.

1. The application for judicial review was refused. The applicable question was whether the Secretary of State's assessment that the further submissions, taken with the material already considered, gave no realistic prospect of success before a First-tier Tribunal was irrational in the light of the duty of anxious scrutiny.

2. The Secretary of State was not required to make the applicant's case by undertaking verification enquiries on her behalf. The primary duty lay on the applicant to present her case as fully as she could. She had in fact made enquiries of the Pakistani registration authority and supplied the resulting material.

3. The Secretary of State was entitled, without irrationality, to maintain the conclusion that the applicant had not established that she was married to Amjad Iqbal rather than the man named in her genuine passport. It was relevant that documents predating the original asylum claim had been produced late, that the explanation that an NGO had held them had not previously been advanced and sat uneasily with the applicant's earlier account, and that the photographs and documents gave rise to unresolved reliability and provenance concerns.

4. The decision-maker had applied anxious scrutiny to the previous and fresh material. She was entitled to attach weight to the earlier determination, the applicant's unexplained possession of documents apparently private to the alleged husband, the timing of production and the concerns concerning the photographs.

5. In any event, the earlier finding that the applicant had lived for eighteen months away from her husband without harm was relevant to protection and internal relocation. Those matters were secondary because the fresh material did not establish the asserted marital identity or consequent risk. The applicant was ordered to pay the respondent's costs, to be assessed if not agreed.

• Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber): Judicial review of the Secretary of State's October 2011 fresh-claim and removal decisions was refused.

• First-tier Tribunal: The applicant's appeal against refusal of asylum was dismissed on 11 April 2011. She became appeal-rights exhausted on 18 May 2011.