iStockA GP has been found guilty of drugging and raping a woman he met on a dating app.
Dr Manesh Gill, 39, carried out the attack in a hotel room in Stirling, where he spiked the woman’s drink before raping her as her “body shut down”.
The unnamed woman, a student nurse, met Gill on the dating app Tinder where he “superliked” her profile, and the two chatted for about six weeks prior to meeting on December 8, 2018.
Gill, who is married and has three children, gave the woman a “really strong” pink gin and lemonade before attacking her.
The 23-year-old woman fought back tears as she told the court of how Gill sexually assaulted her.
She told prosecutor Stephanie Ross: “He was on top of me. I was trying to push him off. I couldn’t.
“I just felt like my whole body was stuck to the bed. He was having sex with me. I wanted to go home. I felt as if I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything, I don’t know.”
The High Court in Edinburgh heard how Gill, who worked as a doctor in Edinburgh, admitted bringing a condom, some Viagra and a bottle of pink gin – the woman’s favourite drink – to the hotel. But he denied that this was evidence he was planning to have sex with the woman.
However, after hearing how Gill told a colleague after his arrest that he was worried police would find morphine in the girl’s system, jurors returned a unanimous guilty verdict to one charge of rape on Thursday afternoon.
Prosecutors reckoned Gill spiked the woman, but jurors deleted the allegation that Gill was the man who carried out the administration of the substance – the identity of the person who administered the drug to the woman isn’t known, as per the jury’s verdict.
Lord Tyre told Gill that he needed to call for a report before he could sentence him, but he told the medic that he needed to put his “affairs in order”.
He said: “By the verdict of the jury you have been found guilty of the crime of rape.
“It is a very serious offence and it is very unlikely that I will be unable to deal with you by with disposal other than a custodial sentence.
“I shall continue bail in this case for the meantime but you should put your affairs in order.”
The story emerged following a four-day trial as Gill, who lives in the city’s Corstorphine area, denied raping the woman.
During the trial, the court heard how the father-of-three cheated on his wife and looked for women on the Tinder dating app.
The woman said she drank three to four pink gins on the evening of the alleged sexual assault and that Gill was drinking something which “looked like cola mixed with something”.
Talking about how the night was going, the woman said she and Gill spoke about work. She said that she didn’t feel drunk and felt ready to leave Gill and phone a taxi.
She added: “I was fine. I didn’t feel uncomfortable or anything.”
The woman said that she needed to use a toilet, but she said Gill told her the toilets in the hotel were out of order.
She said: “He told me the toilets were closed but I could come up to his room and use that one.
“I took his word for it. I thought he was just being nice. I didn’t think anything of it. It was fine. I wasn’t made to feel uncomfortable.”
The woman said she then got into a lift with Gill and went to his room where she noticed he had a bottle of pink gin and a bottle of vodka.
She said she used his bathroom but came back out to find that Gill had made her a drink.
The woman told Ms Ross that she only took a few sips of it as it was “really strong.”
She said she then started to talk to Gill but started to feel “more and more tired.”
The woman said: “I just felt like my body was heavy and I just felt sleepy and tired as if I wanted to go to bed.”
The woman said she said “no” and “stop it” during the attack. She eventually said that she managed to get up and went to the bathroom, locked the door and found the clothes that she had been wearing earlier.
She said: “I came out of the bathroom and said ‘I know what you’ve been doing to me’. I don’t think he said anything.
“I think he said ‘come back to bed’ but I can’t remember the exact words he said to me.”
When asked by Ms Ross whether she consented to the actions, the woman said: “No. It wasn’t my intention. It was my intention to go to the room to use the toilet and that was that. I wanted to go on a date for about an hour.”
The woman managed to leave the hotel and contacted police.
Giving evidence to defence solicitor advocate Iain McSporran QC, Gill said he was “extremely sorry” for cheating on his wife.
He added: “I’m a married man with a professional job and I was meeting women on dates. I didn’t want it connected with my job or my wife.”
He said he didn’t tell his victim he was married, and that ‘Mike’ was a name that friends called him at University.
Gill agreed that he brought Viagra, a condom and the woman’s favourite drink to the hotel with him, but that he wouldn’t have had sex with the woman if she didn’t want him to.
He told Mr McSporran that the sex he did have with the woman was consensual.
Gill said: “She was alert. She was engaging in sex activity. She was enjoying it.”
The court heard that the woman contacted the police soon after and that Gill was arrested the following morning. The court also heard that following the arrest, he told a colleague: “What if they find morphine in her system? It will be her word against mine.”
However, jurors deleted claims that he directly administered the substance to her from the final charge.
Following conviction, Mr McSporran told the court that his client had a Malaysian passport and was willing to surrender it to the authorities by Friday night.
Mr McSporran also asked for his client’s bail to be continued to the sentencing hearing. He added: “I have been instructed to seek bail. He has been on bail for sometime. There have been no breaches of that bail.
“Now that he stands convicted he would the opportunity to put things right with his wife, family and employers.”
Lord Tyre also placed Gill on the sex offenders register. He will be sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on June 15.
Follow STV News on WhatsApp
Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
