During appointments in various medical settings, Krishna Singh, 72, kissed, touched, provided inappropriate examinations, and made sleazy comments to 48 patients.

A rape victim, teenage children, and pregnant women were among the patients.

In their testimony, prosecutors explained how the sexual predator had been “hiding in plain sight” for nearly four decades.

Doctor, who received an MBE in 2013, had disputed the allegations against him.

Singh was found guilty of committing many sexual and indecent offences between February 1983 and May 2018.

He was judged not guilty on two charges and not proven on nine others.

The crimes were mostly committed at North Lanarkshire medical practices, but they also occurred at a hospital’s accident and emergency department, a police station, and on visits to patients’ homes.

Rape victim abused

In the early 1980s, Singh worked as a GP in the area before becoming a police casualty surgeon, where he examined victims of sexual violence.

When a woman denounced him to police in 2018, officials initiated an investigation into his actions.

A 50-year-old hospital worker who had been raped was one of the witnesses who testified.

In March 2008, Singh examined her at a police station in Motherwell.

The woman claimed the doctor asked if she was wearing a skirt and if the sex was consensual. He then proceeded to molest her, she claimed.

She told the court: “He asked how low my top was and if my cleavage was showing. He was asking if I was being provocative. He said ‘so, you are not a good time girl’.”

During checkups on a sore throat, another woman said Singh would “press and prod” at her trouser line when she was a teenager.

She said his behaviour became a “running joke” between her friends.

The woman said: “If that was my daughter, I would be sitting in the dock on a murder charge. No professional should act like that.”

A man told the court he threatened to assault Singh after catching him groping his pregnant wife at an appointment in the mid-1990s.

Many women became so uncomfortable going to see the GP that they brought a friend or relative to appointments.

One woman tried to make her medication last longer to delay having to go back and see him.

‘Hiding in plain sight’

The court heard how victims were often hesitant about reporting Singh through the years.

Women felt they would not be heard as Singh was latterly senior partner at the surgery and his wife was practice manager.

Prosecutor Angela Gray told the jury during the trial that Singh had been in a routine of abusing his position to offend against women.

She said: “Sexual offending was part of his working life. Access to women as and when the situation arose and taking the chances when he could.

“A quick feel, a look in an intimate area, an indecent comment. This was his way of working, Hiding in plain sight.”

Laura Connor, a partner at Thompsons Solicitors who represented some of Singh’s victims, told the BBC the damage he caused would be lifelong.

She said: “The extent of damage that he’s done and continues to do by his defence to the criminal trial is quite unbelievable.

“It has impacted them personally, it has impacted their families. It has done in the past, continues to and will continue to in the future.

“Like many survivors of abuse it impacts all parts of their lives, it’s not an injury which can obviously be seen but it’s there and it’s present all the time.”

The firm said it would begin civil proceedings against relevant authorities in order to secure compensation for victims.

‘Who can they trust?’

Helen Provan, centre director for Lanarkshire Rape Crisis Centre, welcomed the verdict but said she believed there could be more women who had been attacked by Singh but who had not yet come forward.

She said: “Anyone who has been in a situation where they’re not expecting their bodily autonomy to be breached, it makes them feel very violated and leaves them feeling who can they trust after that.

“There can well be an unknown number of women who he has also violated and behaved inappropriately at best to who may well wishing to come forward”.

Image Credit: Getty

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