Preet Bharara and his Indian 'encounters'

Washington, Dec 18: This is not the first time that Preet Bharara, the man behind

's controversial arrest, is under the scanner. In fact, he is said to have championed making some white-collar arrests in the past too.

Rajat Gupta may not ring a bell in the reader's mind immediately. But, even his arrest hit the headlines in 2012.

Rajat Gupta was a well-known entrepreneur and a Wall-Street icon with his origins from Kolkata who was charged with financial fraud, along with Raj Rajaratnam and Anil Kumar and 60 others.

Bharara's verdict read,"With today's sentence, Rajat Gupta now must face the grave consequences of his crime - a term of imprisonment," Bharara said in a brief statement that relayed a salutary message sans any triumphalism. Gupta's conduct, he added meaningfully, has forever tarnished ''a once-sterling reputation that took years to cultivate. We hope that others who might consider breaking the securities laws will take heed from this sad occasion and choose not to follow in Mr. Gupta's footsteps."

After keeping his own counsel throughout the trial, the Wall Street icon and the Indian-American Titan poured his heart out in a 727-word count statement, apologizing to his friends, families, peers and colleagues and to the institutions he was involved with that took his career to the heights.

Bharara has not stopped here. With the latest case of the arrest of the top Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, Bharara has hit the headlines again. It goes without saying that the top judge at Manhattan has also not left the financial moguls too, one of them being Bernie Madoff and crime bosses like Gambinos. Bharara's verdicts, in fact, have taken him to the cover of Time magazine with the caption "This Man is Busting Wall Street".

Who is Preet Bharara?

With roots in India's Firozpur, Punjab. However, his early days were spent in Eatontown in suburban Monmouth County, New Jersey where he studied in Ranney School. He completed his law education from Harvard College in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993. His famous verdicts were against the Gambinos and the Colombo Crime Families when he was the state attorney in Manhattan for five years.

Bharara served as a chief counsel to New York Senator Chuck Schumer in Washington DC, before returning to NYC, where he had worked earlier.