Disgraced doctor struck off after making sick arrangement with underage boy

Salman Siddiqi, 45, has been struck from the medical register after a self-professed ‘paedophile hunter’ snared him at Margate’s QEQM.

The intensive care paediatrician had been allowed to continue treating children there despite previously receiving a police caution for flashing.

The panel took just three hours to reach their conclusion to remove him from the medical register.

The ‘hunter’ had pretended to be a 14-year-old boy and arranged to meet the consultant at his lodgings on the hospital grounds.

When the amateur detective confronted Siddiqi outside his accommodation at 3am on January 8 last year, he turned and ran through the hospital’s A&E department in a bid to flee.

But they gave chase and called the police as Siddiqi tried scrambling away, using his hospital access card to enter restricted areas.

He appeared at Folkestone Magistrates’ Court the following day where he pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual communication with a child and attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a sex offence.

He was jailed in June last year at Canterbury Crown Court for 28 months and will be subject to a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.

Siddiqi, who is being held at HMP Maidstone, chose not to attend his three-day hearing at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, based in Manchester.

The tribunal panel found Sidiqqi’s actions undermined his fitness to practice, and he was struck off.

Once a doctor has been erased from the register they are unable to practice and must wait five years before applying to have their name restored, however due to the nature of the Siddiqi’s conviction it is unlikely he will ever be granted a licence to practice again.

An interim order of suspension had been in place regarding Siddiqi while awaiting the hearing, which was due to expire at the end of the month.

Siddiqi’s sentencing hearing at Canterbury Crown Court heard how he used gay dating app Grindr to converse with a paedophile hunter claiming to be a 14-year-old boy called Lee.

The doctor also lied about his age on his profile, saying he was 32 when in fact he was 44.

“Mr Siddiqi engaged with ‘Lee’ on the Grindr app and asked him to come to his home for oral sex and sent pictures of his erect penis,” prosecutor Amy Nicholson said.

“He asked him to come to his place of work to meet him at the QEQM, where the defendant was working at the time as a paediatric doctor.”

The pair started talking on January 7, with ‘Lee’ making it clear he was underage, the court heard.

The amateur detective asked: “Are you okay with me being 14?”

“Yes,” Siddiqi replied.

In later messages, when asked if he wanted to meet, Siddiqi said: “It is not allowed by law otherwise I would’ve loved it.”

The vigilante wrote: “I can sneak out, my mum’s sleeping. We could have some fun together but I’m pretty new to this and I’m nervous. I’m just 14 and not done this before.”

Siddiqi responded by reassuring his target and encouraging him to take part in sexual acts.

When Siddiqi was arrested explicit messages and images related to his offending were uncovered when police searched his phone.

Kevin Dent KC, mitigating, said Siddiqi had an “unblemished” record as a doctor who “deeply regrets his conduct”.

He also told how the offending had happened in a “depressive episode” and that Siddiqi was willing to address his behaviour.

The barrister said: “At the time, Mr Siddiqi was struggling with the stresses and strains of caring for a severely disabled four-year-old son and the trauma of his condition.

“He was also trying to cope with his attraction to adult males.”

Mr Dent told the court there were financial problems that arose after Siddiqi received a caution and suspension for an incident four years ago, which made it hard to get regular work.

He added the former doctor was a “figure of shame and embarrassment to those who know him”.

Police previously cautioned Siddiqi for flashing his genitals in daylight in a London nature reserve in 2019.

Until officers arrived in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, Siddiqi was held in a citizens’ arrest by onlookers.

He failed to tell the General Medical Council (GMC) about the caution, and in January 2021 started working for East Kent Hospitals, which runs the QEQM.

Siddiqi was employed by the trust through a recruitment agency called ProMedical, but despite the fact his police caution would have shown on a Disclosure and Barring Service certificate, it was not picked up by either.

Two months later Siddiqi told GMC officials about the caution following an “informal discussion” with a senior colleague.

But a disciplinary hearing did not take place until July 2022, following which he was suspended for a month.

Despite this, East Kent Hospitals deemed Siddiqi not to be a risk to patients and he was allowed to continue working at its sites until his arrest in January this year.

At the hearing this week panel members, Dr Srinivasarao Babarao, Susan Hurds and chairman Kamran Choudhry, were told to take into account that Siddiqi had failed to follow through with the remediation steps he had committed to following his previous suspension.

When assessing whether the conviction impaired Siddiqi’s ability to practice medicine they raised the “significant risk of repetition”, the possibility the former pediatrician could reoffend, as a major factor in their decision making.

The General Medical Council’s representative at the hearing, Nigel Grundy, stated that the body’s view was that Siddiqi’s erasure from the profession was the only appropriate sanction.

Sentencing last year, Judge Mark Weekes told Siddiqi: “Your action are deeply troubling.

“With the knowledge and training you have in your profession, you of all people should have known the deep and everlasting harm you were prepared to cause.”

Following Siddiqi’s arrest in January, Rebecca Martin – the chief medical officer at East Kent Hospitals – says the incident was immediately reported to the General Medical Council.

“Our review did not identify any patient involvement or failures in our processes that would have directly prevented this criminal offence,” she said.

“There were missed opportunities to identify his previous caution and we have taken steps to ensure that it cannot happen again.”