London Doctor Manish Shah Charged with 118 Sexual Offences Including Child Abuse

London-based Dr. Manish Shah has been charged with 118 sexual offences including the abuse of a child under 13 years of age.

The 47-year-old doctor is accused of having assaulted 54 victims at a surgery in east London between 2004 and 2013, when he was first arrested.

His charges include 65 counts of assault by penetration, contrary to Section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and 52 counts of sexual assault, contrary to section 3 of the Act.

In a statement published Wednesday night, the Metropolitan Police reported that Shah is also charged with one count of sexual assault on a child under 13, contrary to section 7 of the Act.

According to the Daily Mail, the doctor was first suspended by the General Medical Council in August 2014, a year after the council placed unspecified “interim conditions” on Shah, whose suspension has been extended only on an annual basis since.

Currently, NHS Choices lists him as working as a GP at North Avenue Surgery in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, although none of the charges relate to his time there and the surgery’s records have not been updated in nearly three years.

According to the website, Shah  — who the Mail reports was not born in the UK  — speaks Hindi and Gujarati in addition to English, and cites “family planning” as his main interest.

While his listing on the NHS site notes that the doctor is able to “fit and remove [contraceptive] coils”, it is not known whether any of the allegations relate to intimate examinations.

Shah is to appear at Barkingside Magistrates’ Court in East London on August 31.

In 2012, the Sunday Telegraph revealed that three-quarters of doctors struck off in the UK were from trained abroad, with foreign doctors five times more likely to be removed or suspended from the medical register than those trained in the UK.

According to data obtained by the newspaper using freedom of information laws, India was the country with the biggest single number of doctors who were struck off or suspended, followed by Nigeria and Egypt.

And in the same year, the Daily Mail reported that dozens of doctors were allowed to keep practising, despite being convicted of serious sexual offences.

The General Medical Council said it inquired about an automatic ban on doctors who are on the sex offenders register, but “advice was obtained from a leading QC who concluded that an automatic bar, without exceptions, would not be compatible with human rights legislation”.