Wellington, Feb 5 NZPA - An Auckland taxi driver, jailed for five years for trying to hire a hitman to kill a priest he believed was his wife's lover, has been refused by leave to appeal his conviction in the Supreme Court.

Bhikubhai Patel was convicted in April 2007 of attempting to procure the murder of Sunil Shandra.

He was also found guilty of two charges of threatening to kill Mr Shandra and three of threatening to kill his own wife, Sumun.

The man Patel tried to hire to kill Mr Shandra was a police informant who recorded conversations between the two.

Patel first unsuccesfully appealed his conviction in the Court of Appeal in April last year, questioning the legality and translation of the taped conversations, which were recorded in Hindi.

In a decision released today, the Supreme Court rejected Patel's application to appeal his conviction.

Patel had argued that police were obliged to interview a suspect at the first opportunity -- an argument Justices Peter Blanchard, William Wilson and John McGrath rejected as "plainly untenable".

There was no obligation for police to intervene immediately, and it could be poor practice for them to do so, the decision said.

Patel also argued that he was the victim of a set-up by the informant, and that the recordings of their conversations were unreliable, but both arguments were also rejected.

Police had failed to retain the original recordings, but that did not give rise to a miscarriage of justice, the Supreme Court judges said.

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