Discredited pathologist Dr Freddy Patel to learn fate

Published: 3 September, 2010
by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS

THE panel which found a pathologist guilty of misconduct after he failed to spot signs of abuse on a five-year-old Islington girl, will reveal this morning (Friday) what action he will face.

Dr Freddy Patel, 63, could be struck off today after independent panel at the General Medical Council hearing found his fitness to practise was impaired by way of misconduct and professional deficiency.

Their decision about the doctor, who has carried out hundreds of post mortems on ­people who died suddenly in Islington during a 10-year career at St Pancras Mortuary in King’s Cross, was due at 10am at the GMC’s building in Euston Road.

On Wednesday the GMC’s barrister Simon Jackson QC said the only “appropriate” response from the panel “should not be less than suspension”.

He is already suspended from the Home Office register for forensic pathologists, and has been widely criticised for his role in the Ian Tomlinson case, after he carried out a discred­ited post mortem into the newspaper vendor who died after he was pushed to the floor by police at the G20 riots last year.

The GMC found that in three post mortem investigations between 2002 and 2005 Dr Patel (whose full name is  Mohmed Saeed Sulema Patel) made serious mistakes, including one relating to the autopsy of five year old Holloway girl Annastacia Williams, who had bite marks on her body and had apparently been attacked with a fork.

Richard Davies, the panel chairman, said Dr Patel’s ­“conduct fell well short of the standards expected of a practising Home Office forensic pathol­ogist” after he missed significant marks on the girl’s body in an examination that was merely “cursory”.