London: An Indian-origin dentist in the UK was on Thursday banned from the dental profession for having an 18-month-long affair with one of his married female patient.
Dr Parag Patel's case came up before a UK General Dental Council (GDC) misconduct hearing this week over his conduct with the female patient, referred to only as Patient 1.
"Breaching professional boundaries, providing free treatment whilst encouraging physical contact and engaging in a long-term sexual relationship with a patient represented a wholesale departure from the standards expected of a dental professional," the GDC panel ruled.
"By encouraging Patient 1 to leave her religion and her husband, visiting her in her home, giving her gifts, creating a false email address to send an email to her father, and following her in his car after she had ended the relationship, Mr Patel was behaving in a manner which would be considered deplorable by fellow practitioners," it added.
Patel, also a married man, had trained to be a dentist at the UK's Royal Dental School and ran a successful practice on Harley Street in London.
The 53-year-old told Patient 1 that she was his "soul mate" and encouraged her to divorce her husband, 'Evening Standard' reports.
"We had sex on roughly 50 separate occasions, in hotels, my house and other locations. I was willingly going along with it, heavily persuaded by the fact that he was telling me I was his soul mate. He told me that what we were doing was not an affair; instead, it was a 'soulmate relationship'.
"He said that sex was not about sex, but rather about nourishment. He would often twist and use manipulative words," Patient 1 said in her evidence.
The affair started in mid-2013 with free treatment for the patient in exchange for hugs and kisses. They then started meeting for walks in London's Regents Park, which he officially recorded as "lab days".
Patel, who did not appear during the hearing, is also accused of discouraging her from practicing her religion.
"He began telling me that I was not to go to Church because it was 'a load of rubbish'," Patient 1 said.
When the woman finally broke off the affair, Patel sat outside her house in his car and then followed her as she took her children to school.
