Barrister must pay over abusive emails

A barrister in a £33 million race row who waged a campaign of harassment against her former boyfriend was today ordered to pay £1,000 compensation to his new love interest.

Dr Aisha Bijlani, 43, bombarded her ex-boyfriend with abusive emails and was hell-bent on destroying his life after he left her for a German model, Blackfriars Crown Court in London was told.

But rejecting an appeal against her harassment convictions, Judge Peter Clarke QC ordered Bijlani to pay 28-year-old advertising model Nicola Koenig £1,000 for her troubles.

Bijlani asked marketing executive Atul Sehgal, 41, whether his dead mother was a whore and told him he was a "pathetic lap dog", "arsehole", "loser" and an "impotent gay man" who was a "failure in every way", the court was told.

She also sent five abusive emails in four days to Ms Koenig, Mr Sehgal's friend, telling her she was a "German Nazi prostitute", a "cheap hooker", a "working class trollop" and a "flat-chested asexual freak" with sweaty feet who should lick toilet bowls for a living.

The judge said: "It is not only a remarkable communication to make to a complete stranger but, we're bound to say, one a person who has been practising at the bar for 14 years must have been suffering from a significant degree of stress to invent.

"But stress is no defence."

The judge told the court Bijlani had demonstrated a "remarkable lack of self-knowledge" and added: "Her world has come crashing down."

He said matters deteriorated when Mr Sehgal, who denied playing the two women off against one another, sent Bijlani a link to Ms Koenig's modelling website.

The judge compared Bijlani's relationship with Mr Sehgal, whom she dated for four months in 2004, to that between the characters in the play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, "where both spouses almost seem to do their best to hurt the other".

It was both childish and dysfunctional, the court was told.

During her four-day appeal, Bijlani blamed the race discrimination claim against her legal chamber Four New Square for sending her into a spiral of depression which led to her sending the malicious and insulting emails between June and August 2007.

The judge said it was obvious Bijlani's dispute with her chambers, which she lost earlier this year, was causing "considerable stress and strain" and affected her mental health.

He said the original sentence imposed by West London magistrates - a conditional discharge for 18 months - was in no way improper but added that he saw no reason for Bijlani to have to serve that again.

Instead he gave her a conditional discharge of just one day.

But despite hearing Bijlani had no income and was not working, the judge noted her home in Ponsonby Terrace, Belgravia, central London, was paid for in full and ordered her to pay the full £10,000 appeal costs.

Prosecutors had asked for a contribution of just half that amount.

He also ordered her to pay the £1,000 compensation to Ms Koenig.

"What will not be lost on any person in this room is not only did Mr Sehgal have to come back to give evidence in full, but Ms Koenig had to come over to this country, receive the perfectly proper attentions of the media and go over these events all over again."

Referring to Bijlani, the judge went on: "The difficulty is she has been frankly prolonging her agony and, of course, the attendant publicity, but that is something she has chosen to bring on herself."

He said she never set foot inside the magistrates' court at any stage.

"I see no reason why public money should be spent paying for an appeal of this kind," he said.

Pamela Reiss, for the Crown, said Bijlani waged a calculated campaign of harassment, prompted by jealousy and anger, with the aim of ruining Mr Sehgal's life.

Mr Sehgal told the court he was "falling in love" with Ms Koenig, but the model insisted they had never had an intimate relationship.

Outside court, Bijlani said: "I can't comment because my employment case is under appeal.

"I just want to apologise to everyone again."