GP charged with 118 sex attacks including one on a girl aged 13
A DOCTOR has been charged with 118 sex attacks at a GP surgery, including one on a child under 13.
Dr Manish Shah, 47, is accused of assaulting 54 victims at the practice over a period of nine years.
Police launched an investigation into the doctor in September 2013 after receiving a flood of reports from women and a girl in July and August that year.
Shah, who trained and qualified at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in central London in 1993, is accused of 65 counts of assault by penetration and 52 of sexual assault.
He is also charged with one count of sexual assault on a child under 13, the Metropolitan Police said. The alleged offences took place between June 2004 and July 2013 at the practice in Havering, East London. Shah was arrested on September 23, 2013 and has remained on bail since then.
He was re-bailed multiple times as police continued to investigate the allegations against him.
Earlier this year, detectives received fresh information in the long-running case which led to him being charged yesterday. Last night a spokesman for the General Medical Council revealed Shah had been suspended since 2014.
A doctor of the same name and GMC registration number is listed online as working one day a week at a surgery in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, although none of the charges relate to his time there.
The NHS website says Shah, who has been registered as a GP since March 2006, is able to perform some minor surgery and his main interest is in family planning. The website adds that he is able to ‘fit and remove [contraceptive] coils’, but it is unclear if any of the allegations relate to intimate examinations.
Shah, who speaks Hindi and Gujarati in addition to English and was not born in the UK, lives in a detached house in an upmarket area of Romford, East London, where the average home costs more than £800,000.
Land Registry records show that he bought the property for £305,000 in 1999.
A spokesman for the GMC was unaware that Shah was still listed as working on the Southend-onSea surgery website, pointing out that he would not be allowed to practise under suspension.
The spokesman added: ‘We do not comment on ongoing investigations. Dr Manish Shah had conditions placed on his practice in 2013 preventing him from seeing female patients alone, and was suspended from the register in 2014.
‘This means he has been unable to practise since then. In matters where a doctor is subject to a criminal investigation, our own investigation process cannot continue until criminal proceedings have ended.’
Shah is to appear at Barkingside Magistrates’ Court in East London on August 31.
‘Suspended since 2014’