DR. GROPER: SUIT
Popular Queens physician is accused by young women
A Queens doctor whose claimed attentiveness to his patients helped him draw 956,000 YouTube followers is accused in a class action lawsuit of sexually abusing female patients.
Dr. Ferdous Khandker is accused of fondling patients during checkups for ailments like throat infections, insisting on random pelvic examinations, and asking women to undress unnecessarily, the Queens Supreme Court suit states.
One plaintiff, identified in the suit as Bea, said she was 14 years old in 2011 when she saw Khandker for complaints about seasonal allergies — and ended up being groped.
“Everything was going normal, and then he told me to sit on the bench of the exam table. I did that, and he told me to sit up — he was just trying to check my breathing, he said. He was just talking to me, keeping me in conversational mode,” said Bea, now 23.
“He told me to lower my shirt,” said Bea, outlining allegations in the lawsuit.
“Obviously, I lowered it as much as I was comfortable, and then he proceeded to pull my shirt with the stethoscope to my left side.
“He exposed my left breast, and I looked at him, like, ‘Are you serious?’ ”
Bea said she got herself out of the office as soon as it was safe to do so and never returned.
“When I was walking out of there, in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘What just happened?’ ” she recalled.
“The situation was too complicated for me to raise my voice, and then this was buried for years.”
Khandker, who according to his website was educated in Bangladesh, is well known in the city’s Bengali community. His website advertises “world class medical services” and says his clinic aims for “excellence in clinical care and patient safety, education and service.”
Bea said she told her teenage best friend about the assault, but nobody else, fearing the community would punish her.
“In my culture, it’s kind of ignored most of the time. Women don’t discuss this kind of issue,” Bea said. “It kind of makes us, the woman, look bad — like, something happened to you, so you’re kind of damaged.”
Susan Crumiller, a lawyer whose firm represents the women, said Khandker’s alleged victims continue to come forward. Their stories are similar, she said.
“He has a little setup where he invites the parents in,” Crumiller said. “There’s a chair for the parent, and he positions himself with his back to the parent, so the parent can’t see what he’s doing with his hands.
“And he’ll casually chat throughout the assault,” said the lawyer. “This is something that we’ve seen as a pattern both with the parent and when the parent is not present, that he’ll engage in this sort of casual chatter — which is very disorienting.”
It was only years later, in June 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was still claiming thousands of lives in New York City, that Bea, now married, said she realized she was just one of Khandker’s victims.
“The Bengali community in Queens had its own #MeToo moment. A Facebook post by plaintiff ‘Dora’ from February 2020, regarding Khandker’s assault, went viral,” the lawsuit says.
“A groundswell of similar accusations began to mount.”
The online pile-on led Khandker to file a defamation suit last fall against three of his most vocal accusers, seeking $1 million in damages.
A judge tossed the defamation suit on July 23 and ordered Khandker to pay his accusers’ legal costs. Khandker is appealing the dismissal, court papers show.
Khandker has not been charged with criminal wrongdoing and is still treating patients at his office in Jackson Heights.
The New York Office of Professional Medical Conduct commenced an investigation into his patients’ allegations last year. The office does not comment on active investigations.
Crumiller filed the class-action suit on Aug. 14, the last day New York’s Child Victims Act provided survivors of child sexual abuse a one-year window to sue their assailants.
So far, the suit has four identified plaintiffs. Crumiller believes many more potential plaintiffs may join her case.
Khandker’s workplaces, Western Care Medical Services P.C. and Jackson Medical, PLLC, where the alleged abuse occurred, are also named defendants in the lawsuit.
Western Care and Jackson Medical “falsely promoted the facility and their services as safe for children,” reads the lawsuit. “They negligently retained Khandker, although it was foreseeable that Khandker would continue to sexually assault children and young women, which he did.”
MetroPlus Health, a health insurance provider that contracts with both practices, received complaints about Khandker’s alleged misconduct as late as 2017 and reported it to his employers, according to the suit.
One of the complaints concerned a young female patient who said he groped her breast without medical justification.
Khandker, whose since-removed Instagram page racked up over 18,000 followers in the pandemic, did not respond to The News’ requests for comment. His lawyer could not be reached.