SINGAPORE — A doctor who drugged a patient then molested him was sentenced to 42 months’ jail on Thursday (July 28), as a judge chastised him for abusing his position and showing “scant regard” for the victim’s safety.

Tan Kok Leong, 50, took more than 20 photographs of the partially-clothed patient after sedating him. The patient, also a medical doctor who was Tan’s business partner at that time, cannot be named due to a gag order.

Criticising Tan for taking advantage of the victim while he was unconscious, District Judge Siva Shanmugam said: “The accused and the victim were in a doctor-patient relationship. The accused was also regarded as a mentor by the victim. The accused had abused his position by exploiting the victim’s trust in him.”

Tan, a partner at Life Source Medical Practice in Novena, had performed liposuction on the patient on July 5, 2013. He booked a room at the nearby Oasia Hotel for the patient to recuperate.

Around 11pm that night, Tan told the patient that he would be administering Dormicum, a stupefying drug, and Rosiden, a painkiller. After doing so, he took off the patient’s shorts and used his handphone to take lewd photos of him in the hotel room. He repeated these acts the next day.

The offences only came to light after a fellow doctor saw the photos in Tan’s handphone.

The patient was supposed to head a clinic in Penang as part of a business deal with Tan, but decided to break off the partnership.

“I could not do it anymore after this incident. I walked out of the clinic and lost everything that I had. At that time, the clinic’s renovation had just completed. We still owed quite a sizeable amount of the renovation costs,” said the victim, in a statement tendered to court.

On Thursday, prosecutors lambasted Tan for going to great lengths to cover his tracks. “He had also taken photographs of the molest for his own personal viewing pleasure, objectifying and debasing the victim,” said Deputy Public Prosecutor Alan Loh and Assistant Public Prosecutor Thiagesh Sukumaran.

Defence lawyer Edmond Pereira countered that his client had taken the photographs for “clinical purposes”, to facilitate a penile augmentation procedure for the victim.

“If (Tan) had intended for the photographs to be taken other than for (this purpose), (he) would not have been so blatantly careless with his mobile device when he handed it over to (another doctor) to transfer certain videos, knowing that he had photographs of the victim’s genital area and half-naked state in his mobile device,” said Mr Pereira.

The drugging was done to relieve the patient of the pain from the liposuction procedure, he added.

In sentencing Tan, the judge noted that sedating a patient outside of the hospital without monitoring or resuscitation equipment was “inappropriate and extremely dangerous”.

“The accused appears to have had scant regard for the victim’s safety and wellbeing,” he said.

Tan intends to appeal against his four convictions — two for drugging the patient to molest him, and two counts of molesting him in the hotel room. Bail has been set at S$40,000.

The prosecution is counter-appealing Tan’s acquittal for a fifth charge of molesting the patient during the liposuction procedure.