A Pakistani doctor accused of sexually assaulting two women patients had a one-way ticket to Birmingham on him when gardai stopped a taxi he was in. He initially told the gardai he was going to visit friends in Sligo, a jury in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard yesterday. When a detective told him he had information he was leaving the State, the 35-year-old doctor produced the bus and ferry ticket to Birmingham. He said he was going to visit his wife and three-year-old daughter, who were living there.
The next day, while in Garda custody, the accused man made a statement to his solicitor denying claims by a 23-year-old patient that he had sexually assaulted her. The gardai later received a complaint from an 18-year-old patient, and on August 21st, while in prison custody, the doctor made a second statement to his solicitor denying these allegations.
This evidence was given by Sgt Michael O'Brien and Det Sgt Thomas Watters on the third day of the trial of the doctor, who was employed as an anaesthetist in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, during July 1997.
Sgt Watters agreed with defence counsel Mr Barry White that the accused co-operated with the investigation. He agreed the one-way ticket did not mean he was not going to return to Ireland. The doctor has pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting the two patients during a pre-operative assessment on July 28th, 1997. Both women were to have their tonsils removed.
Det Garda Barry Carolan, Mountjoy Garda station, said he and a colleague were keeping the accused man's flat under surveillance on August 6th, 1997. They had "certain information" and they watched as the accused hailed a taxi and put three suitcases into the car.
The taxi was stopped a short time later by Det Sgt Watters and the accused was arrested. He was carrying his passport and the oneway ticket. This confirmed their information, he said.
The landlord of the flat had told the court the accused told him he was returning to Pakistan.
The mother of the 23-year-old patient told the court she and one of her other daughters confronted the accused in the Mater on July 28th, 1997. He told them he had carried out an internal examination because the patient had complained of a bowel condition. As a junior doctor he would have to have the answers to any questions his senior colleagues might have. The witness said she told him that as the mother of a large number of children she had undergone a number of operations but was never given an internal examination by an anaesthetist. The trial before Judge Frank O'Donnell and a jury continues.