Brit-Indian dentist 'tried to seduce patient with discount on treatment offer'

London, Sept 23 (ANI): A Indian dentist in Britain has landed in court after he tried to seduce a married patient into having an affair with him after her husband suffered brain damage in a severe asthma attack.

The General Dental Council was told that Milan Shah would ask her during her visits to Alexander House Dental Practice in St Albans, Hertfordshire, how she was coping.

The misconduct hearing was told that he began pestering the mother of five with phone calls, phoning her roughly once a week.

"The matters relate to a breach of trust and the advantage we say that Mr Shah sought to take from her in her difficult life circumstances," the Daily Mail quoted Heather Norton, for the GDC, as saying.

"In March 2007, Patient A's husband had an asthma attack which left him in a vegetative state.

"It left her to bring up their children, four of the five of which are disabled. She can perhaps be described as in a vulnerable state. Mr Shah became aware of that position.

"These calls were not clinically necessary. Patient A had never given Mr Shah her phone number - the only way he could have obtained it was in her patient records," Norton stated.

The dentist is also said to have wrongly told Patient A that treatment she needed was not available on the NHS and charged her 350 pounds for it. He then made the 'conditional' offer to cut the price.

She made an official complaint against Shah after contacting her NHS trust and discovering she could have been treated on the National Health Service.

And she gathered evidence by calling Shah and recording conversations in which he begged her to withdraw the complaint.

Patient A told the hearing that Shah had always seemed 'professional' before her husband's asthma attack, during which his heart stopped beating for 15 minutes.

After the attack he had to move to a nursing home. Shah then began calling her at weekends on her mobile number and inviting her to visit the surgery.

"I couldn't not answer because he always phoned on a withheld number, and obviously with my husband in the condition he was in, he was not looking to survive, I had to answer every call," she said.

She visited the surgery after one such call to 'tell him straight' that his attentions were not wanted.

When she arrived, Shah began to speak of his own marriage problems, telling her that he had an arranged marriage and he and his wife lived separate lives.

It was then he made the remark about her 'not getting any loving from your husband'.

Shah, of Pinner, North-West London, denies making the phone calls, or making either of the alleged inappropriate comments.

He also denies telling Patient A that the treatment she needed was not available on the NHS.

The hearing continues. (ANI)