Former GP partner who took images of patients in states of undress is struck off

A GP partner who took covert mobile phone pictures of partly unclothed patients during examinations has been struck off the UK medical register.

Thair Altaii, 56, was convicted of three counts of voyeurism over six years and sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment at Newcastle Crown Court in August 2018. He was also required to be on the register of sex offenders for 10 years.1

In 2014 a patient at Red House Medical Centre in Sunderland, who had removed some of her clothing for an examination, noticed two upright mobile phones in the room. She notified Northumbria Police, who arrested Altaii and found more than 19 000 images of women, some clothed and others in various stages of undress, on his computer.

The three counts of voyeurism with which he was charged related to that patient, of whom he had taken 123 images over three or four years, and another woman who had been a patient of the practice since childhood and who appeared in 224 images.

Altaii did not appear at the hearing of the medical practitioners tribunal but provided a statement in which he asserted that his criminal case was dealt with in “a biased, selective, and unfair way,” said Nessa Sharkett, who chaired the tribunal. He apologised to his victims but “the majority of his statement attempted to justify his actions and apportion blame elsewhere,” she said.

His expressions of regret were undermined by his continued denial of his offending behaviour and his “apparently dismissive” attitude to his victims in documents attached to his statement, “where he appears to seek to undermine their credibility,” she added.

The tribunal concluded that striking him off the register was the only appropriate sanction, given his “gross abuse of trust” and “persistent lack of insight.” He will have 28 days to appeal.