KZN sex pest lawyer barred

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File photo

Published Dec 14, 2015

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Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal Society of Advocates has taken action against a “sex pest lawyer” who was working as an independent advocate, by securing a court order “as the custodian of morals in the profession” barring him from practising again.

“We act in the interests of the court, the profession and the public, as we are obliged to,” advocate Ahditya Kissoon-Singh, who was chairman of the society at the time of drafting the papers, said in the recent application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court against Soobramani “Steve” Mundhree.

Mundhree, who is in his late sixties, began working as an “independent” advocate after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a young clerk who was working for him when he was a regional court magistrate in Durban.

The magistrate presiding over his trial found that he had lured the 24-year-old clerk to his office under the pretext of giving her chocolates for Eid.

There he had kissed her on the face, neck, cheek and mouth and then, while he had put his tongue in her mouth, he had fondled her right breast.

He had told her he loved her and could not stop staring at her in court.

While Mundhree denied this – and implied that she had come on to him – the presiding magistrate ruled that he had been a sexual opportunist and sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment, wholly suspended.

Mundhree took his case on appeal, but Judges Kevin Swain and Gregory Kruger said they were satisfied that the complainant, and not Mundhree, was telling the truth.

They refused to allow him leave to appeal.

It has now emerged that he also petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal, but that too was dismissed, “on the grounds that an appeal has no reasonable prospects of success”.

The society, in its application which came before Judges Mohini Moodley and Jerome Mguni, said it was not only his criminal conviction which rendered him not fit and proper to be an advocate, but also the fact that he had taken the oath to tell the truth, but had been found to have lied by both the trial magistrate and two appeal judges.

“It is his mendacious evidence which is of concern.

“He is practising as an advocate and has deliberately sought to mislead a court in a criminal trial. The only inference is that his word can no longer be accepted as being truthful,” Kissoon-Singh said.

He also referred to a letter of complaint received by the society regarding an unrelated matter in which Mundhree was accused of acting in a matter without being briefed by an attorney and putting undue pressure on a magistrate to send a drunk driving conviction case on special review in order to obtain a “cheap appeal”. He said he had been instructed by an attorney and denied “any improper pressure”.

In his opposing affidavit which was filed before the appeal court decision, Mundhree said he was confident that the court would clear him and that the findings against him were “as a result of misunderstanding of his version” which was that the complainant had “given me a kiss after I gave her the gift”.

The Mercury

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