CCPR/C/117/D/2462/2014 relating to the Status of Refugees, his application for residence under section 7 of the Aliens Act will be refused. 4.3 The State party observes that according to the case law of the Refugee Appeals Board, homosexuals are considered to belong to a particular social group and that, depending on circumstances, they may fall within the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. In the present case, the Board took into account the information provided on persecution prior to the author’s departure from his country of origin and based itself on the assessment of his situation if he returned to his country of origin. In its decision of 4 December 2012, the majority of the members of the Board considered that the author’s allegations lacked credibility and appeared fabricated for the occasion. The Board found it peculiar that the applicant had not himself contacted his mother, who had obtained valuables worth approximately 600,000 taka,12 which was paid to the agent who arranged for the author’s departure. The author allegedly made contact through a person whom he had met at random. The Board also considered it suspicious that the author had dared to have sexual intercourse with a friend in a paddy field several times. Finally, the Board considered that the applicant had given inconsistent statements: he had stated to the Danish Immigration Service that he was sitting at a café when the person from the village spotted him in Rangpur, whereas he had stated before the Board that he was recognized by a village citizen who was sitting in a tea-house, while he was in the street. Based on an overall assessment, the majority of the Board found that the author had failed to render his grounds for asylum credible. It concluded that the author would not be at a real risk of persecution under section 7 (1), or abuse falling within section 7 (2), of the Aliens Act if he returned to his country of origin. For those reasons, the Board upheld the decision of the Immigration Service 4.4 On 12 April 2013, the author requested the reopening of the asylum proceedings. As a reason for reopening them, he submitted that it appeared from the decision of the Board that it had not considered the fact that he was a homosexual. The author claimed that he would risk persecution simply because of his sexual orientation, regardless of whether he had had a homosexual relationship or not. He also objected to a wrongful assessment of his credibility, arguing that crops in paddy fields could be so tall that a person could hide there. On 19 September 2014, the Board ruled on three documents produced by the author (annexes A, B and C to his request for the reopening of the asylum procedure), which were also provided to the Committee, and found that no new information rendered the risk of persecution probable or substantiated if the author returned to Bangladesh. The State party observes that the author did not provide any new information to the Committee that would justify a revision of its assessment of the author’s case by the authorities in the State party. The State party further submits that even when a person makes consistent statements, they are not necessarily true and cannot necessarily be considered as facts when their content is unlikely and do not seem to reflect a personal experience. 4.5 In that connection, the State party observes that the author’s educational and personal skills enabled him to repeat the same narration several times without any essential discrepancies. It further argues that the author’s statement alleging that the Immigration Service and the Refugee Appeals Board based their decisions on the fact of his homosexuality is suspicious, insofar as in none of the decisions was it concluded that it could be assumed that the author was homosexual. The State party observes that the author consistently stated that his homosexual relationship with his friend Tuhin had been discovered; that he had therefore been subjected to abuse and persecution prior to his departure; and that he feared that he would again be subjected to treatment falling within 12 Approximately $7,638. 5