Indian-American confirmed as US attorney for Manhattan

Punjab-born Preet Bharara has been confirmed by the US Senate as the new Attorney for Manhattan in New York, considered the most prestigious federal prosecutor's post outside Washington.

President Barack Obama had announced his intent to appoint Bharara as the US Attorney on May 15.

Bharara's nomination was confirmed by the Senate on Friday, New York senator Charles Schumer said in a statement. He served as chief counsel to Schumer for more than four years.

In his new post, Bharara will oversee more than 200 lawyers who handle some of the country's most prominent cases, like the prosecution of Bernard L Madoff for his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, The New York Times reported.

A naturalised American citizen from India, The Times said Bharara brings a diversity of background to the post.

"He contributes things that we've not seen before," Daniel C Richman, a law professor at the Columbia University and a former Southern District prosecutor, said.

"He's thought hard about what a US attorney's place should be within a broader federal enforcement system and the train wrecks that can develop when unthinking or ill-thinking bureaucrats tamper with that," The Times quoted him as saying.

Bharara was born in Ferozepur India and moved to the US as an infant as his parents migrated to America in 1970.

Bharara grew up in Monmouth County, NJ, and graduated from Harvard in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993. That summer, he worked for several weeks as a volunteer in Mark Green's campaign for public advocate, occasionally driving
the candidate to campaign events, the NYT said.

His father, a Sikh, and his mother, who was Hindu, were born in what is now Pakistan, before India and Pakistan were separate countries.

In the violent migration that occurred after the 1947 partition, his father and mother both moved to the Indian side, with their families losing property and most of their possessions, Bharara said, according to The Times.

A Wall Street Journal blog said Bharara played a major role in the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation into the firings of United States attorneys around the country - an investigation that was, by its nature, political, Bharara won points from both sides of the aisle.

The NYT said Bharara even won over fired prosecutor David C Iglesias of New Mexico, a Republican who said he had wavered over whether to testify voluntarily before the panel, fearing that it would degenerate into a "partisan circus."

But after their conversations, Iglesias said, he concluded that Bharara was approaching the investigation like a prosecutor, not a politician.