| Daily Express |
Thursday
February 8 1996
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| Title: So very close to victory | ||
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PAUL FULLER Tycoon is told: Your son should not be kicked out A NEPALESE teenager at the centre of a bizarre "adoption" by a millionaire tycoon should not be deported from Britain, an immigration tribunal ruled yesterday. But the ultimate fate of Jayaram Khadka, 19, who has been made the heir to castle-owner Richard Morley's £2.5 million fortune, now rests with the Home Secretary. Mr Morley yesterday pledged to give up his life at Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean and quit Britain unless the Government upholds the independent tribunal's recommendation that Jayaram should not be deported. He is even prepared to leave behind his mistress Helen Thomas, who revealed to the Daily Express last week that she plans to leave her husband Max and two teenage sons to become part of the "family" community Mr Morley is creating at the castle. Yesterday's decision has no force in law - it is a recommendation to the Home Secretary, who could ignore it and press ahead with the deportation order. "We have to see what the recommendation is and what the tribunal said and give it due consideration," said a Home Office spokesman. "The options are to press ahead and ignore the recommendations or to concede and give him exceptional leave to remain." It is not known how long that decision will take. Jayaram is alleged to have given a false age when he entered Britain on a visitor's visa in 1990 after Mr Morley rescued him from poverty in Nepal. The 41-year-old tycoon said he was honouring a pact he made with the boy's father, a Nepalese policeman, who saved him from certain death when he suffered a lung collapse in the mountains there 12 years ago. There had been confusion over Jayaram's age because there were no records of the birth in Nepal, he claimed. Two tribunals had rejected Jayaram's pleas to stay in the UK before yesterday's appeals tribunal recommendation that he should be allowed to settle. Mr Morley and Jayaram travelled from their 18th century Gloucestershire castle to London to hear yesterday's ruling. Afterwards Mr Morley, a former naval officer turned computer consultant, said: "It has been a great victory for justice, but there is still concern over whether the Government will follow the recommendations. "The Home Secretary has been aware of the circumstances of the case for quite some time. "If the Home Office chooses to deport after these recommenda- tions then naturally we will carry on a campaign to reverse that decision, whatever it takes to do that. "I will obviously return to Nepal with Jayaram and remain there until such time as that decision is reversed." Jayaram, who could not read or write before he arrived in Britain, said: "I am so keen to stay in this country because I have my family and friends. "I have been brought up and educated and I have learned a lot of things here. "To have to leave suddenly and go to a place where people might not understand me would be a very traumatic time for me. "I would be isolated from my family and people who I trust 100 per cent." Asked to describe the strain of fighting to remain in the UK, Jayaram said: "It has been quite a huge struggle to get this far." In its eight-page report, the tribunal said it had no doubt it would be "traumatic' for Jayaram to have to return to Nepal. Chairman Professor David Jackson said: "He appears a young man of promise and it would be regrettable if that promise were to be fundamentally affected by a legal process over which, in our view, he has probably had little control. "Looking at the interest of Mr Khadka in particular, therefore, we are strongly of the view that any public interest there may be in immigration control in general is outweighed in this case by the circumstances relevant to it." Mr Morley's driving ambition is to set up at his castle what he describes as "the family of the 21st century" - up to 25 people aged 18 to 80 who are not related by birth. He admitted the arrangement was "unusual" but said the tribunal decision had supported their right to live as they chose. |