A DOCTOR accused of sexually assaulting a woman at the John Radcliffe Hospital claimed the examination of her was purely medical.

Anandagopal Srinivasan, of Sandfield Road, Oxford, denies assault by penetration on a patient at the Oxford hospital as well as sexual assault of a woman at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.

Prosecutors allege that he exposed one woman’s breasts at the Cambridge hospital in 2014 before performing a sex act on another female patient at the Oxford site in October 2016.

As his trial at Oxford Crown Court continued yesterday the 27-year old took to the witness box to give his version of events.

He said that he had examined the alleged victim in a cubicle at the John Radcliffe together with a friend of hers and that after failing to take a blood sample another doctor completed the blood work.

He then completed an abdominal examination of her stomach area while the friend was in the room before he left, requesting she give a urine sample, he told jurors.

Asked about giving vaginal examinations he said: “I had been taught how to do them, as a doctor I was qualified to do one if necessary but at the A & E department as the most junior doctor it was not my place to do one, it was always done by someone senior.”

Asked if his fingers had at any stage gone underneath the woman’s underwear during his examination he said that he could not remember but that it was ‘possible’ they had.

He told the court that he had never touched her inappropriately at any point during the examination.

Answering the Cambridge incident he told jurors that he had never removed the woman’s clothing but had asked her to lift up her top so that he could perform an examination of her.

He said: “I asked her to move the clothing but she moved them. I did not expose her breasts.”

The woman also claimed that Srinivasan ‘stared’ into her eyes and at her breasts during the examination.

Answering the allegation he told the court that as a doctor he would look at a patient’s face in order to check for signs of pain and discomfort as well as ‘visual signs of disease’.

Srinivasan denies both counts and the trial continues.