The psychiatrist who was key to Schabir Shaik’s release on medical parole has emerged as a man apparently willing to throw ethics aside for money or sex.
Dr Abubaker “Abie” Gangat was the lead doctor pushing for Shaik’s release on medical grounds and was the only medic who testified before the parole board that approved his discharge on March 3 last year.
The Mail & Guardian has established that Gangat treated prisoner Shaik both as a private doctor and as a “visiting psychiatrist” appointed by prison authorities to service patients from Westville prison.
This would have lent official weight to his submissions to Correctional Services and the parole board calling for Shaik’s release on medical grounds.
Now an M&G investigation has revealed past details that may throw new light on the credibility of the man who helped Shaik escape from doing prison time.
Responding to detailed questions from the M&G, Gangat has denied acting unethically — now or in the past — and said his history was “unrelated” to his care of his patients, including Shaik.
But evidence collected by the M&G suggests that in the early 1990s — during his tenure as professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Africa (Medunsa) outside Pretoria — Gangat was involved in a number of scandals that reflect poorly on his integrity.
They include:
- His peripheral involvement in a murder and fraud investigation;
- His inappropriate affair with a young doctor who later overdosed; it seems his fear of exposure of his affair may have delayed her treatment; and
- His penchant for soliciting cash donations from pharmaceutical companies.
The murder case
It has emerged that Gangat was close to Dr Omar Sabadia, the Pretoria psychiatrist who arranged to have his wife, Zahida, murdered in February 1996 by staging a fake hijacking. Gangat has confirmed he “knew Dr Sabadia socially”.
Sabadia claimed hijackers had stabbed him and abducted Zahida, but it later emerged that his wounds were superficial and that he had hired the killers. He is serving a 50-year jail term.
Two sources involved in the investigation have claimed that Gangat played a role in having Sabadia admitted to or sedated in hospital despite his insignificant injuries, thus shielding him from questioning in the crucial period following Zahida’s disappearance.
Gangat failed to respond directly, stating only: “Dr Sabadia was never my patient … Although I visited him in hospital I did not examine him and could not express a medical opinion about the extent of his Âinjuries.”
A Star newspaper report at the time stated that police wished to interview Gangat, but that he had left the country the day before Sabadia confessed and led investigators to his wife’s body.
Gangat told the M&G he had travelled to Pakistan in March 1996 to attend the Cricket World Cup and a medical congress: “This trip was planned well in advance and in no way related to the investigation against Dr Sabadia.”
The report also linked Gangat to a parallel fraud investigation being carried out into Sabadia’s practice. Sabadia was accused of submitting fraudulent medical aid claims. The report described Gangat as a partner in the Sabadia practice.
Gangat has told the M&G he was “most certainly never” a partner in Sabadia’s practice but, “from time to time and at irregular intervals”, acted as a locum.
He said he had no insight into Sabadia’s financial affairs and was not involved in claims the practice submitted to medical aids.
However, the M&G has a copy of a draft letter dated December 13 1994 that includes Gangat’s name on the Sabadia practice letterhead. The draft, apparently annotated by Gangat, makes a stout defence of the practice in response to a fax from a medical aid accusing the practice of “over-servicing”.
The suicide
Evidence obtained by the M&G has raised disturbing questions about Gangat’s relationship with a young and psychologically fragile doctor on his staff and the role he played in events surrounding her suicide.
During the affair it appears Dr Veronika Cernochova was effectively a student, employee and patient of Gangat, a married man.
Gangat told the M&G his personal relationship with Cernochova was a “private matter”. He said Cernochova was “never my patient” and for that reason “my interaction with Dr Cernochova cannot constitute unethical or unprofessional Âconduct”.
The Pharma cash cows
Information obtained by the M&G suggests that Gangat, while working at Medunsa, adopted a pattern of soliciting payments from drug companies to attend conferences or to fund his proposed book on psychosis. These requests Gangat combined asking companies for a “generous donation” with an emphasis on the fact that he promoted their products.
For instance, on June 19 1991 Gangat wrote to the manager of Sandoz, requesting funding to attend a conference in Hamburg in September 1991 on suicide prevention. He noted the cost would be R14 000 and stated: “It is my intention to publicly acknowledge any sponsorship that I receive. I wish to add that I prescribe your products Bellergal, Leponex, Melleril and Etomine, which I have found not only beneficial for selected patients but also safe and devoid of any serious side effects.”
With regard to his self-published book, Psychosis and Its Management, Gangat issued multiple solicitations. For example on March 17 1992 he wrote to Mr P Zwemstra of Smith Kline Beecham, enclosing chapters of his draft and stating: “You will note that your product Strelazine features prominently. Further, I strongly recommend your product, very often as first-line Âtreatment.”
He asked for R5 000 to R10 000 to enable him to publish the book. Letters on similar lines, suitably amended, were sent out to a raft of other drug companies.
In one case, brought to the attention of the M&G by a former colleague who did not want to be named, Gangat is alleged to have tried to secure funding from multiple companies for the same conference, although one company had already agreed to cover his costs.
In 1994 Steve Maritz, then a pharmaceutical marketing manager, withdrew funding to Gangat after initially agreeing to sponsor all costs of the trip. Maritz discovered Gangat had written to numerous other drug companies, requesting funding for the same expenses.
Maritz, now retired, confirmed the essential facts of the allegation. It is alleged that in one case Gangat had asked for a cheque to be made out to him personally “to avoid it going through all those committees”.
Gangat told the M&G that requests for funding were made “in accordance with acceptable practice at the time”.
“I most certainly was never censured by the Health Professions Council or for that matter by the university.”
How Gangat helped Shaik
Dr Abubaker Gangat was brought in to treat Schabir Shaik for stress and depression when he was transferred from prison to St Augustine’s private hospital in November 2006 because of persistent high blood pressure.
On February 7 2007 Gangat wrote to Correctional Services to advise that Shaik’s stay in St Augustine’s should be extended because Shaik posed “a severe suicide risk”. He said Shaik had told him: “I believe that I would be better off dead than alive.”
That letter was leaked to the media, dampening public criticism of Shaik’s lengthy hospital stay.
In May 2008 Gangat submitted a medical dossier to Sarel Marais, the medical manager of Westville prison — and the man who had appointed him as “visiting psychiatrist” for prison patients. Shaik was at that time being treated at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli hospital and Gangat again advised that he should “continue to be managed in a tertiary institution”, claiming the prison’s high-care unit could not provide emergency care. Gangat’s covering letter emphasised Shaik’s “deteriorating medical condition” and summarised the specialist medical reports that were attached, with at least one notable exaggeration.
Gangat claimed Shaik’s high blood pressure had already damaged his kidneys, when the clinical evidence disclosed no such thing, but rather “minimal narrowing” of the renal artery that was “not significant” and kidney function that was normal. He suggested Shaik be released on medical grounds and do “community service”.
Gangat’s dossier formed an important part of the material considered for Shaik’s medical parole — granted only to prisoners in the final stages of a terminal illness — and the psychiatrist was the only doctor to give formal evidence to the parole board that approved his release in March 2009.
Gangat told the M&G: “I generally do not hesitate to act and support all of my patients, regardless of creed or colour, to the best of my ability and in what I believe to be their best interests.”