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NEW DELHI: Delhi law minister Somnath Bharti’s track record as a successful lawyer involves an indictment for "tampering with evidence" by a Patiala house court.

This has emerged from an order passed by then CBI Special Judge Poonam A Bamba in August last year when she hauled up Bharti and his client Pawan Kumar - facing prosecution on corruption charges - after the CBI accused them of influencing a prosecution witness by speaking to him on phone and discussing the case.

"The conduct of accused Pawan Kumar and his advocate (Bharti) is not only highly objectionable, unethical but also amounts to tampering with evidence," judge Bamba observed in her order cancelling Kumar’s bail on the ground that he misused his liberty.

Kumar challenged the order in Delhi high court and the Supreme Court later through advocates Prashant Bhushan and Bharti but both courts refused him relief.

Despite several attempts to contact him on Monday, Bharti couldn’t be reached for comments. His staff informed TOI the minister was busy in several functions.

The case relates to Kumar’s prosecution by the CBI in three separate cases for his alleged acts of omission and commission while employed with the State Bank of Mysore since 2006. As one of the cases came up for trial, testimony of B S Diwakar, a prosecution witness was recorded in court. During his cross-examination, Kumar through Bharti told the court he wanted to confront Diwakar with an audio conversation and wanted to place the same on record.

A surprised court then learnt from Kumar that he/his advocate Bharti, had a telephonic conversation with Diwakar. Kumar claimed during the talk on phone, Diwakar expressed a different opinion relating to the corruption case than what he testified in court. This conversation was recorded by Kumar and Bharti argued his client should now be permitted to place the audio tapes on record to effectively confront the witness and to bring out the truth.

The CBI demanded that Kumar be sent back to jail, accusing him and Bharti of influencing a witness and trying to tamper with evidence. Judge Bamba rejected Kumar’s prayer to take the audio tapes on record as evidence by reasoning that "the accused has ample opportunity to elicit facts/truth from the witness by questioning him during cross examination before the court." She followed it up with cancelling his bail.

Kumar soon moved HC, where in addition to Bharti, advocate Prashant Bhushan represented him. They sought quashing of all criminal charges against him or else clubbing of the three cases where he figures as an accused. Among other prayers, Kumar’s lawyers also asked HC to transfer the case from Bamba’s court and urged it to set up an "SIT to investigate the conspiracy and corruption surfaced in looting crores of public money..order the call records of the accused, their counsels and the public prosecutors of the cases to unearth the conspiracy as revealed by the witness Mr BS Diwakar."

However, the HC declined relief, pointing out that Kumar had already sought bail before the trial judge where his fresh application was pending. The court saw no merit in the demand for SIT and noted, "Since after due investigation, the charge-sheet was submitted by CBI and the trial is still pending, as such, no direction can be given for setting up of an SIT only on the basis of some tape-recorded conversation which, as per version of CBI is still unverified and has not even come on record."

Moreover, HC added, Kumar "has not assigned any reason as to why the case which is pending in the Court of Ms Poonam A Bamba be transferred to another Court." On the demand for call records of accused, lawyers and prosecutors HC again rejected it saying, "No reason has been disclosed in the petition as to why the call record is required."