For the first time in the Kingdom’s legal history, a convict was handed over community service as punishment.

The convict - a lady government psychiatric doctor - was found guilty of stealing medicines from the hospital, where she was working and selling them in her private clinic. Though she was initially given oneyear-jail, the High Criminal Court replaced it with one-year community service. According to court details, the doctor used her patients to get medicines from the pharmacy before selling them in her clinic and the act was noticed by a pharmacist who reported it to higher authorities. “She was prescribing four to five medicines to some patients and when I took up the matter with her she said it was by mistake,” the pharmacist testified before prosecutors. “The woman doctor would ask patients and their bystanders to get medicines from the pharmacist and then seize those medicines from them.” Even family members of the patients were upset with her behaviour, he added. Upon investigation, it was found the doctor had a private practice and she was selling these stolen medicines in her clinic.