Disgraced family GP who stole worth £1,600 of Botox products from a cosmetic clinic has been allowed back to work

A disgraced family GP who faced career ruin after she stole Botox products worth £1,600 from a cosmetic clinic has been allowed back to work early.

Dr Nimrit Dhillon, 35, was caught on CCTV repeatedly helping herself to boxes of Belotero Intense and Bocouture botox from a store room while working as a trainer.

Footage showed Dhillon – who calls herself ‘Dr Nim’ – checking the coast was clear before she loaded her stolen goods into her handbag.

When she realised she had been caught, Dhillon, of Mansfield, Nottingham, sent texts to the clinic’s founder begging her not to alert the General Medical Council (GMC).

One text read: ‘Please my GMC I can’t be struck off please I can’t risk my GMC please I beg you.’

She was subsequently reported to the GMC and made subject of a police probe which led to her appearing before Liverpool JPs in August 2023 where she admitted theft by employee and was ordered to complete 200 hours unpaid work, a 12-month community and pay £1,450 compensation.

Last November at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, Dhillon was found guilty of misconduct charges and was suspended from practice for eight months.

But this week it emerged her suspension had been revoked after only seven months following an agreement between her at the GMC that she was safe to return to her job.

The hearing was told she had attended an Ethics and Probity Course and other online courses and in a statement she said: ‘I accept full responsibility for my actions.’

Dhillon added: ‘I was dishonest and I stole property. These actions were wholly unacceptable and fell far below the standards expected of any medical professional.

‘I deeply regret the harm caused to those I colleagues that I stole from as well as the harm that my actions could have caused the reputation of the profession, to public trust, and to those who relied on me to act with honesty and integrity.

‘I have used the suspension period to reflect extensively, to rebuild my ethical understanding and to ensure that I never repeat these mistakes.’

The Manchester tribunal was told the thefts took place at an unnamed clinic in Liverpool when Dhillon was delivering training to healthcare professionals on how to administer Botox and facial fillers as well as providing these treatments to patients. 

Police were called in after three separate raids on a store room between May 23 and June 8 last year.

In the first Dhillon stole one box of Belotero Intense and three 100-unit boxes of Bocouture botox worth £450, while in the second she plundered three 100-unit boxes of Bocouture botox, one box of 50-units of Bocouture, one box of Belotero Balance and one box of Belotero Volume to the value of £700. 

In the third raid she looted four 100-unit boxes of Bocouture worth £450.

The hearing was told all the stolen products was found at Dhillon’s home and none had been used. She later claimed she didn’t need the product for herself but it was ‘just sitting there.’

When quizzed by police she said: ‘I don’t know why I did what I did – but I was going through a lot’ while a letter she pushed through the door of the clinic read: ‘I really don’t know what I can even say or where to even begin in expressing my extreme sadness. I know words are not enough right now, but it is all I have. I am so incredibly truly deeply sorry.’

In a statement, the clinic’s owner – who set up the business after being made redundant from her nursing job by the NHS – said Dhillon appeared ‘ethically to be great fit for our team.’

She added: ‘It really hurt when we found out she was stealing. The thefts caused animosity among our small team, and created a terrible atmosphere with stocktakes taking place and deliveries having to be checked. 

‘My business partner had a near breakdown and the decision to report the thefts was ‘the most stressful we have experienced.’

In revoking the suspension MPTS chairman Nathan Moxon said: ‘Dr Dhillon has demonstrated significant remediation and has not reoffended.

‘I am satisfied, from careful consideration of all of the documentation she has provided, that the risk of repetition of the behaviour that led to her conviction is so low as to be negligible.

‘She has developed significant and sufficient insight and remediation and a finding of impaired fitness to practise is no longer necessary to maintain public confidence in the profession or promote proper professional standards.

‘Reasonable members of the public and the medical profession will understand that Dr Dhillon has undergone a rigorous regulatory process during which she was suspended from practice and, during that period, developed her remediation as required of her/

‘Dr Dhillon has therefore satisfied the persuasive burden that her fitness to practise is no longer impaired.

‘In light of my decision, I direct that Dhillon’s current period of suspended registration be revoked with immediate effect.’