£5,000 fine for GP who stole £130 from her patient’s bag

A GP who stole money from a mother’s purse during an appointment for her sick baby was fined £5,000 yesterday and now faces being struck off.

Dr Nurpur Mittal, 33, took £130 cash from Kelly Wissenden’s purse after the mother-of-two left the consultation room to obtain a specimen from her nine-monthold son Zaio Headley.

Miss Wissenden, 29, said she thought it was ‘odd’ when she returned and saw Dr Mittal ‘fiddling around’ in her bag, which she had left on her child’s buggy in the doctor’s room.

But she only realised the money was missing when she checked the purse as she left White Cliffs Medical Centre in Dover, Kent.

It emerged in court that Dr Mittal had previously been given a ‘fiscal warning’ for shoplifting in Scotland. She now faces the possibility of being struck off the medical register as she will be ordered to appear before a General Medical Council disciplinary board.

And she was warned yesterday by Judge James O’Mahony at Canterbury Crown Court that she will be sent to jail if she doesn’t pay the fine within six months.

Dr Mittal, from Shepherdswell, near Dover, was convicted of theft by a jury last month.

Judge O’Mahony told her: ‘This is a sad state of affairs.

‘A patient has the right to expect that the last person in the world who would steal from them was a doctor.’