Highlights
- High Court replaces disbarment with a fixed suspension
- Suspension expired on Tuesday (30), allowing Mohindru to resume practice.
- Misconduct related to a false claim on a 2012 job application.
- Court cites his subsequent record of integrity in reducing the sanction
AN ASIAN barrister has won a High Court appeal against his disbarment after he was found to have falsely claimed to have studied medicine at the University of Oxford in an application to a London barristers' chambers.
The High Court replaced Anurag Mohindru's disbarment with a fixed suspension, which expired on Tuesday (30), allowing the 51-year-old to return to practice as a barrister.
Mohindru had been disbarred last year after the Bar Standards Board (BSB) charged him with dishonest and discreditable conduct.
An independent disciplinary tribunal found that he had provided false information on his curriculum vitae during an application for tenancy at 23 Essex Street chambers in November 2012.
In his judgment, Justice Johnson said the public could distinguish between recent or repeated dishonesty and misconduct that occurred many years ago and had not been repeated.
"The public is capable of understanding the difference between a practitioner who has recently acted dishonestly, or whose dishonesty forms part of a continuing pattern, and one whose misconduct occurred many years ago, has not been repeated, and whose subsequent conduct has demonstrated a sustained record of integrity," the judge said.
"In such a case, public confidence may be maintained by a sanction which marks the gravity of the dishonesty without permanently excluding the practitioner from the profession."
The Bar Standards Board has updated its register to show that Mohindru was "suspended from practice between October 7, 2025 until June 30, 2026".
The regulator alleged that Mohindru knowingly misled members of 23 Essex Street chambers by claiming that he had studied biomedical science or medicine at the University of Oxford when he knew that was untrue.
The disciplinary tribunal concluded in September last year that Mohindru had acted dishonestly by including the false claim on his CV.
Mohindru, a King's Counsel (KC), was called to the Bar of England and Wales by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 2004.
The High Court heard that he had studied medicine at St George's University in the US before completing a postgraduate Bar vocational course at the University of the West of England in Bristol in 2004.
During his legal career, Mohindru has appeared in several high-profile cases, including representing England cricketer Ben Stokes in proceedings arising from a nightclub incident in 2018.
(PTI)
