Doctor barred 11 years after sex assault on teen

A doctor who sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl on a bus has been struck off the medical register, 11 years after the incident happened.

Amitabh Kumar was initially suspended from practice after he touched the teenage passenger's neck and hair and rubbed her leg with his foot.

Kumar, from Bradford, pleaded guilty to the offence at a magistrates' court in 2014 and received a community order.

A series of subsequent tribunals barred him from practising medicine for a time-limited period.

However, a new review has now disqualified him indefinitely after Kumar wrote a letter to the Medical Practitioners Tribunals Service (MPTS) in which he criticised his victim and claimed he was wrongly arrested.

The MPTS hearing was told that Kumar, who did not attend, had written he was a "victim of corrupt police and CPS systems" and referred to the Post Office Horizon scandal which saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted.

A General Medical Council (GMC) representative described the tone of Kumar's letter as "worrying" as it suggested the insight into his offence was "deteriorating, instead of developing".

The MPTS ruling described how, in 2016, Kumar had claimed he could not remember the incident. The following year he was described as having demonstrated "exceptional insight" and that it was said he "now understood the gravity of the offence".

By September 2019, a tribunal ruled that Kumar's fitness to work in the profession was "no longer impaired" by his conviction, but that he needed to refresh his clinical skills, having not practised for nine years.

On that occasion, his suspension was extended by a year to give him a chance to improve, but subsequent reviews in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 found that there had been no change in these circumstances.

Making its conclusion following the latest tribunal, the panel said: "Dr Kumar has had many years to address the concerns regarding his practice and has persistently failed to do so.

The ruling added that the panel "took the view that Dr Kumar has now disengaged with the hearing process and is therefore unlikely to endeavour to remediate the concerns regarding his practice".

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.