Victorian GP Shyamal Kanti Datta banned after sexually assaulting patients

A Victorian GP who denied groping and kissing the mother of his young patient has been disqualified from practising as a doctor after a tribunal of his peers found he had committed the grubby act.

Datta was found to have sexually assaulted a young patient’s mother.

A Victorian GP who denied groping and kissing the mother of his young patient has been disqualified from practising as a doctor, after a tribunal of his peers found he had committed the grubby act.

Shyamal Kanti Datta, aged in his 60s, was found to have sexually assaulted the mother of his 11-year-old patient during a medical appointment while he was a practicing GP in October, 2013.

At the end of the consultation, Dr Datta shook the woman’s hand while she was sitting and did not let go.

As she stood, he pulled her towards him, leaned forward, kissed her cheek and touched her breast, leaving her “in shock”.

She immediately went to her car, telephoned her husband, and told him what had happened.

Datta groped a woman in his medical practice.

“She was really upset and was crying,” a Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard in December.

She rang the clinic’s head office and staff took her details and said someone would call her, “but she did not ever receive a call back”, the tribunal heard.

The victim reported the sexual assault at the local police station and was contacted the next day by the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation team.

Police were alerted, but the allegations were not criminally prosecuted.

The victim ultimately decided not to pursue prosecution because it would be “very uncomfortable process” for her and her family.

“She did not want her son to go through that,” the tribunal heard.

The tribunal heard the victim was left traumatised fearing being left along with male doctors.

She only raised the issue with police in 2021 after seeing Datta being sued over similar allegations.

Datta denied the allegations, describing them as “facetious, false and fictitious” at the hearing in December, claiming no memory of the incident.

But a tribunal of doctors found that Datta had a “tendency” to “make inappropriate physical contact with females in his consulting rooms” and then try to “deny that the conduct occurred”.

“Datta’s conduct demonstrates a complete inability on his part to self-regulate his behaviour and warrants a serious outcome,” the written judgment said.

Datta had previously been reprimanded in a February 2022 VCAT decision after the tribunal found two of four women’s allegations against him true.

From 2011, Datta was registered as a GP in regional Victoria, but was refused a registration renewal in 2016 after failing to pass the Australian Medical Council clinical examination and has not been registered since.

He was disqualified from holding a medical licence until July 28, 2027.