A British medical body has cleared two doctors who had been accused of failing to notice "extraordinary coincidences" over the deaths of patients under the care of Harold Shipman, Britain's worst serial killer.
The General Medical Council in Manchester threw out the case saying there was insufficient evidence to support a finding of serious professional misconduct against doctors Peter Bennett and Rajesh Patel.
The doctors, who worked in surgeries close to Shipman's practices and countersigned cremation forms filled out by the serial killer, could have been struck off the medical register if the charges against them were proved.
The case against four other doctors accused of serious professional misconduct - Jeremy Dirckze, Stephen Farrar, Alastair MacGillivray and Susan Booth - will continue at a later date.
Earlier in the hearing lawyer Nigel Grundy, representing the GMC, accused all six doctors of signing the cremations forms without questioning contradictions Shipman made in his accounts of the deaths.
He told the Fitness To Practice panel that dozens of bodies were released for cremation in circumstances where the coroner should have become involved.
The GMC decision came a day after the long-running Shipman inquiry headed by High Court justice Janet Smith lambasted the the GMC, saying it cares more for doctors than it does for patients.
It said the General Medical Council was too focused on "looking after their own", and doubted its ability to protect patients from "dysfunctional or under-performing doctors".
Shipman, 57, who hanged himself in his prison cell in January this year, is believed to have killed at least 215 patients with lethal injections of morphine at his practice in Manchester over a 23-year period.
The most prolific serial killer ever to be convicted in Britain, he was jailed for life in January 2000 on 15 counts of murder. He always denied his crimes.