UK doctor Mohammad Siddiqui facing jail after using a rusty hook to carry out painful circumcisions on kids

A paediatrician who used a rusty hook to carry out “unnecessarily painful” circumcisions on 23 children is facing jail.

Dr Mohammad Siddiqui, 56, set up an unregulated “mobile children’s circumcision service” in the UK and failed to give sufficient pain relief to his victims.

The former NHS surgeon was able to operate privately despite having been struck off the official register nine years before.

Siddiqui charged £300 a time for the risky procedures at the family homes of patients, Southwark Crown Court heard.

He told police he had carried out 1200 to 1500 such procedures since 2012. Police who searched Siddiqui’s Toyota found the hook along with a serrated wheel and bloodied scissors.

Officers also found a “circumcision immobiliser”, a device used to restrain children, alongside other instruments not properly sterilised.

Families of the boys Siddiqui treated said he did not wash his hands prior to the treatment, did not wear surgical gloves and failed to carry out proper examinations.

They also said he carried surgical materials in plastic carrier bags and used baby wipes during the procedure.

The shamed medic was able to operate his “legal” business for five years even after being removed from the medical register in 2015 for bungling religiously motivated circumcisions on four boys.

At the time, the General Medical Council said he was a risk to patients and had faced 69 charges of misconduct when he was employed as a clinical fellow in paediatric surgery at University Hospital Southampton.

He was able to operate legally because circumcision is classed as “consensual assault”, similar to tattooing.

Siddiqui, from Birmingham, was yesterday convicted of 12 charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, five charges of cruelty to a child and eight charges of administering prescription-only medicines between 2014 and 2019.

He will be sentenced next year.

Anja Hohmeyer, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Siddiqui meted out painful cruelty to children leaving them with emotional and physical scars.”