A solicitor who manipulated a client into sending explicit images by saying they were required for legal reasons connected to her case has been struck off.
Sunny Sidhu, admitted in December 2018, was the case-handler for Person A, who instructed Warwickshire-based firm LDJ Solicitors in November 2020 to advise her in respect of divorce proceedings and obtaining a prohibited steps order against the father of her children.
Sidhu had claimed he required the images to protect his client from her ex-husband carrying out an act of revenge porn and that the images were needed to support a non-molestation order application.
The SDT judgment said Sidhu accepted he had known his client to be vulnerable but did not obtain the images for his own gratification. He denied he had been dishonest.
Person A, in a witness statement, said Sidhu would ‘blur the lines between the professional and the personal’.
The judgment said: ‘For the next six weeks [Sidhu] requested the explicit photos and videos in every conversation that they had and would reiterate what he said in their first conversation regarding revenge porn. He also emphasised that revenge porn would be her ex-husband’s next move and that there would be nothing he could do to help her if he did not already have the photos.’
Sidhu claimed the photos sent to him would then be uploaded to a secure file on the firm’s case management system and then deleted from the phone. He did not tell Person A the number provided was his personal number.
The SDT found Sidhu to be dishonest. His conduct was ‘clearly inappropriate’ and ‘clearly sexually motivated’. It said: ‘There was no credible motivation for the respondent to request explicit images from Person A other than in pursuit of sexual gratification or in pursuit of a future sexual relationship.’
It added: ‘[Sidhu] used his position as a solicitor to request and receive these images, which was an abuse of his position. Person A trusted the respondent at a time when she was vulnerable and felt incapable of making decisions for herself; the respondent knew or ought to have known this.
‘The public would be appalled at [Sidhu’s] behaviour, engineering a situation in which he could request explicit images from a client and then pestering her, through his position of authority as a solicitor, to send them to his personal mobile phone.’
Striking off Sidhu, the panel said his actions ‘had not been spontaneous. His conduct was planned and a clear breach of the position of trust Person A had placed in him’. He had taken advantage of a ‘vulnerable person who he had deliberately targeted’ and ‘had not demonstrated any genuine insight or remorse’.
Sidhu was ordered to pay the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s costs of £32,394.72.
