Calcutta, March 29: A gynaecologist who started stripping after asking his patient to undress for a check-up was arrested from his Beleghata chamber yesterday on charges of molestation and attempted rape.

The patient, a 25-year-old fashion designer, had been going to Soumitra Pramanik for treatment for several months.

She did not suspect him when he asked her to remove her clothes in the deserted chamber yesterday afternoon.

“She had visited the chamber several times. When the doctor called her to his chamber, she did not find anything wrong,” said an officer of the Beleghata police station.

Pramanik had called the woman on her cellphone around 4pm and asked her to come over. “She reached the chamber and found no other patient. The doctor’s assistant was also not there,” said the officer.

“He locked the chamber door and asked me to take off my clothes. I hesitated, but he said it was needed for a thorough check-up. Although reluctant, I followed his instructions. He asked me to lie on the table,” the woman said in her complaint.

On the diagnosis table, she found the doctor’s behaviour unusual.

“He was not examining me professionally. Suddenly he went to a corner of the cham-ber and started taking off his clothes. I realised what would happen next. I got up, somehow wrapped myself with my clothes and rushed out. I ran straight to my house and narrated everything to my roommates,” she told the police.

The woman from Sikkim, who completed a fashion-designing course from the National Institute of Fashion Technology here a couple of years ago, stays as a paying guest in the same locality

She apparently mustered the courage to go to the police following her friends’ advice.

“The woman was traumatised when she came to the police station. She narrated everything and wrote down her complaint,” said an officer.

A police team went to the chamber and picked the doctor up.

Pramanik was today re- manded in judicial custody till April 5.