Seven-million-pound immigration detention claim collapses on go-kart video
Judge finds claimant fabricated psychiatric injuries with partner posing as voluntary carer, Home Office needed private surveillance to test what medical papers could not
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A Sri Lankan man who sought more than £7 million from the Home Office over injuries he said he suffered in immigration detention was undone this year by, among other things, a go-karting video. Mr Justice Mansfield ruled on Friday that Vengadeswara Raw Gopalakrishnan had 'deliberately fabricated' claims that psychiatric damage sustained while detained between September 2013 and February 2014 had left him unable to work or leave his home unaccompanied.
Gopalakrishnan entered the UK in 2010, overstayed his student visa when it expired in 2012, and filed an asylum application the following year that failed. He was later released from immigration detention on medical grounds, and in 2023 was granted indefinite leave to remain. His lawsuit claimed a severe depressive illness with psychotic symptoms, ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder, and a need for round-the-clock care for the rest of his life. He said he lacked the mental capacity to conduct the case himself, so Reena Mathew acted as his 'litigation friend' — presented to the court as a voluntary carer. In April she told judges his condition had improved only 'ever so slightly' and that he could not prepare meals, leave the house alone, manage his finances or arrange his own medical care.
The Home Office hired inquiry agents to observe him in public between May and June. They filmed him driving his children to school, dining at restaurants and completing an hour-long gym session. Online records showed he had entered a go-karting competition; departmental records showed he was working as a delivery driver. Faced with the recordings, he offered 'no explanation for the inconsistencies'. The judge found that Gopalakrishnan and Mathew — who evidence revealed had been partners for over a decade with three children — 'acted together', and ordered him to pay the Home Office's legal costs. He described the twelve years the claim consumed of court time and public funds as 'scandalous'.
The case ran for twelve years on claims the department had no way to test until private investigators pointed a camera at a public street. Gopalakrishnan will now carry the costs bill; the inquiry agents, presumably, send their invoices on time.