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# Sri Lankan Doctor in Australia Suspended for Three Months for Harassing Medical Student
- URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/featured/sri-lankan-doctor-in-australia-suspended-for-three-months-for-harassing-medical-student/
- Published: 2026-11-13T04:10:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-13T05:45:56.000Z
- Author: Our Reporter
- Tags: November 2026

**By Jaffna Monitor News Desk**

A tribunal in the Australian state of Victoria has suspended a Sri Lankan doctor from practice for three months after finding that he sexually harassed a medical student who was on placement at his general practice clinic in regional Victoria in 2021.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal imposed the penalty on Tuesday on Dr. Widana Pushkara Epa, a general practitioner in his late 50s who studied medicine in Belarus and moved to Australia in 2009, The Noticer, an Australian news website, reported. The tribunal had ruled 19 months earlier that he harassed the student.

The three-member panel said an “administrative oversight” had held up the case and that Dr. Epa had lived with the proceedings for about five years, and it said it took that into account. It also said it wanted the penalty to serve as a warning to other doctors that “sexual harassment and taking advantage of a power imbalance will not be tolerated.”

The student, identified in the proceedings only as Ms. P, was working at the clinic as part of her medical training. The tribunal found that on Oct. 20, 2021, Dr. Epa rested his hand on her inner thigh for about two minutes, and touched her there several more times in ways it found “inconsistent with the contact being necessary, accidental or otherwise unintentional.”

The next day, the tribunal found, he put his hand on her inner thigh again, placed his left arm around her waist and buttocks, and asked whether he could come to her house.

Four days before those incidents, on Oct. 16, he had touched her hip and thigh while she was performing an excision on a patient, and later that day asked for her address and phone number. The tribunal did not find the Oct. 16 touching to be sexual conduct, and it did not treat the request for her contact details as a breach.

The panel found that the touching on Oct. 20 and 21 was sexual conduct and amounted to sexual harassment. It said the contact was repeated, involved parts of the body generally regarded as private, and included rubbing, stroking or caressing, or keeping his hand on her for longer than an accident could explain. It also found that Dr. Epa had taken advantage of the power imbalance between the doctors who supervise and assess students and the students themselves.

Dr. Epa denied wrongdoing. He told the tribunal that he had been unfairly accused and that he had no intention of touching or harassing Ms. P.

The panel described Ms. P as a “credible and reliable” witness and noted that she was unwilling to say that Dr. Epa had acted with a sexual motive. She had told a fellow student that she did not want him to get into trouble. When his lawyer asked her about that remark, she said she was afraid she could suffer for being a whistleblower in the medical profession. She did not return to the clinic after Oct. 21 and completed her placement elsewhere.

At the penalty hearing, the Medical Board of Australia, which regulates the country’s doctors, and representatives for Dr. Epa put forward a joint proposal of a reprimand and a three-month suspension, according to The Noticer. His lawyer nonetheless argued that a fine would be sufficient.

The lawyer told the tribunal that the conduct was “completely out of character” and not sexually motivated, and that the investigation and the tribunal case had left Dr. Epa in “despair.” The lawyer said the doctor had “effectively suspended himself for 21 months.” Through his lawyer, Dr. Epa said he had never meant to cause the student pain and that, as a devout Buddhist, he prays for her suffering to end and for her to have a long career in medicine.

The panel rejected a fine. It said nothing less than a three-month suspension would be adequate and cited the need for general deterrence to protect the public. Costs will be decided at a later date.

Australian disciplinary bodies have dealt with several cases in recent years involving senior doctors and the students or junior doctors they supervise. In May 2025, a tribunal in Tasmania suspended Dr. Cyril Latt for one month and barred him from supervising medical students for a year after he kissed and touched an international medical student during her placement at his rural practice in 2020\. The Medical Board had sought a three-month suspension in that case.

In October, Dr. Leslie Bolitho, a former president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, had his registration cancelled and was barred from reapplying for 12 months after the Victorian tribunal found that he had touched junior doctors he supervised in Wangaratta, in northeastern Victoria. He had already surrendered his registration.