Dr Gurkirit Kalkat suspended for ‘beating himself up’ to frame a patient he wanted to drop

A GP has been suspended after beating himself up in a bid to frame a patient for assault because he wanted him dropped from the surgery’s list.

Dr Gurkirit Kalkat, 58, called the patient in for an appointment only to throw himself against the door and begin hitting himself in the chest so he could give a false report to the police.

The bewildered patient sat in a chair and looked on as Mr Kalkat shouted: “Stop hitting me. Ow! This is violence, you’re attacking me!”

Police officers were called to the Thames View Medical Centre in Dagenham, Essex, and took the innocent patient home in handcuffs but the investigation was dropped when Mr Kalkat refused to proceed with a prosecution.

Mr Kalkat wanted the patient, who had drug issues, struck off the books at his surgery as it was due to be rebranded under a merger with another practice.

He lied to the patient about having terminal blood cancer to encourage him to register with another GP and paid out more than £40,000 ($78,000) of his own money to fund rehabilitation treatment.

During an earlier consultation, the patient secretly filmed the GP as he falsely claimed he had six months to live and offered him a further £15,000 to leave the practice.

At the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester, Mr Kalkat, of Loughton, was suspended from medical practice for 12 months after he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct.

He denied wrongdoing.

The hearing was told the GP had entered into a written “contract” with the patient in which he agreed to fund treatment in a rehab clinic for his drug addiction in return for him “not taking legal action” against Mr Kalkat or the surgery.

In total, six payments were made to Step One Recovery Ltd totalling £44,150.

During one consultation the GP falsely told the man known as Patient A he was going to America for “immunotherapy” for blood cancer and added: “If it works, it might give me another five or six months but if it doesn’t, then I might not be about in the summer.”

But the tribunal was told Patient A failed to register with another surgery and on February 3, 2020, he was called in for an appointment with Mr Kalkat.

The patient said: “I went into his office for my appointment and he gave me four weeks of prescriptions. Then he stood up and walked towards the door, threw himself against the door slightly, put his fist on his chest and said, ‘Stop hitting me’.”

‘I was still sitting in the chair and started to laugh a little bit because I honestly thought he was joking at first.

“But then he said to his receptionist, ‘You just see him hit me didn’t you?’ and she replied ‘Yes, I did’.”

“He said to me, ‘Now you have used violence you have to leave my surgery’.

“I replied to him ‘What are you doing? Are you being serious or is this some sick joke?”

Mr Kalkat also faked an account of the incident on Patient A’s medical records saying: “I feel that he is trying to extort/blackmail money from me. Patient A then jumped up, shoved me to the door and punched me on the left side of the chest.”

The hearing was shown a Metropolitan Police report of the incident which read: “No arrests were made, no police interviews were carried out, no witness statements were obtained and no evidence was gathered, as Dr Kalkat did not wish to pursue the case.”

“However, there are concerns around the registrant who, of his own admission, for unknown reasons, allegedly gave his patient money for rehab treatment and the patient requesting a further £15,000 which was part of the conversation that took place before the patient allegedly assaulted the registrant.

“There are also concerns that the registrant has told his patient that he has cancer in order to get the patient to stop being his patient.”

Mr Kalkat declined to attend the hearing, claiming it was not “safe” due to Patient A’s ‘volatile’ behaviour.