Indian doctor gets bail for gangrape, two more victims come forward

TORONTO - As an Indo-Canadian doctor and his colleague, charged with drugging and raping a woman, were released on $100,000 bail each Wednesday, two more women have alleged sexual assault by him.

Dr. Amitabh Chauhan and Dr. Suganthan Kayilasanathan, both 32, were arrested Friday for the alleged drugging and gangrape of a 23-year-old in a downtown Toronto hotel Feb 13.

Chauhan is a plastic surgeon and married to a psychiatrist. Kayilasanathan, who came from Sri Lanka as a child, has been Chauhan’s friend since childhood.

The victim told police that she personally knows the two doctors and that they met at a hotel bar where they drank for some time as the two men offered to give her career advice.

She said they all went to another bar where the accused spiked her drink with some noxious substance and then took her to a hotel where she was gangraped.

When the two accused appeared in court Wednesday, the judge released them on $100,000 bail each. Chauhan’s wife and Kayilasanathan’s father put up the bail money.

The court ordered the accused to surrender their passports and live with their bail guarantors. They have also been forbidden from leaving Ontario province and contacting the victim.

As the two accused were walking out on bail, another woman came forward to allege sexual assault by Chauhan.

Police said she responded to their call to any more victims of the two doctors.

“The allegation (by the second woman) is of sexual assault in nature against Dr Chauhan,” police said Wednesday.

A third woman has called with a similar allegation, police added.

Since Chauhan and his friend had travelled to Panama together in February, police suspect there might be victims overseas.

Chauhan graduated from the McMaster University at Hamilton near Toronto. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario currently lists him as a postgraduate student at the department of plastic surgery in the same university. He is also a naval reservist with the Canadian Forces.

Kayilasanathan, the other accused, is a family physician in the Toronto suburb of Markham.

(Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)