A DISGRACED Dudley doctor has been jailed for 12 years for carrying out sex attacks on women patients at his Dudley surgery.

Jaswant Rathore had denied 18 charges of sexual assault on patients at Castle Meadows Surgery but the jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court returned a unanimous guilty verdict on ten charges involving four patients.

The judge in the case had adjourned sentencing until today (Thursday) as he wanted to carefully consider the sentence.

But he sent Rathore straight to custody after the verdict - warning him he would face a lengthy spell behind bars.

Stourbridge News: Dr Jaswant Rathore

Rathore, a married father of five from Ploughmans Walk, Wall Heath, carried out the assaults between 2008 and 2015 on four different women aged between 20 and 32.

The court was told he abused his position of trust to carry out sexual assaults and intimate examinations.

Prosecutors said he managed to persuade the women to undergo ‘manual manipulation therapies’ using massage, which enabled him to assault the women for his own gratification during one-to-one consultations - with no chaperone present.

The court was told his victims were left feeling traumatised after their treatments and that missed appointments were met by Rathore telephoning to ask where the patients were or to remind them of forthcoming appointments.

Police began investigating after a woman complained of sexual assault in May 2015, after she went to Rathore suffering from a hip problem.

Following investigations, more complaints came to light and the doctor was arrested in May 2015 and then again in January 2017 following further complaints.

Rathore, who qualified as a GP in 1985, claimed his intimate massages on some patients, which he conducted without wearing surgical gloves, were medically justified but insisted others were making up their accounts.

After considering the evidence for nearly six-and-a-half hours at the end of a seven-week trial - the three-man nine-woman jury found Rathore guilty of ten assaults on four patients and cleared him of a further eight assaults (involving another four patients).