The doctor’s Zen Estilo. Picture by Arup Maitra

Dankuni (Hooghly), Jan. 13: A doctor was caught allegedly molesting a woman in his beacon-fitted private car off Durgapur Expressway on Sunday night.

Goutam Chatterjee, who practises in Uttarpara and Rishra, around 20km from Calcutta, allegedly assaulted the police officer who found him with the woman and tried to flee before he was chased and arrested.

The 42-year-old man was produced in court yesterday and released on bail. He has been charged with molestation, assaulting a government servant on duty and illegally using a beacon.

Chatterjee told police he was “a busy doctor and the beacon helped him move faster through traffic”.

The 27-year-old woman, who accused the doctor of molestation, told the police she was a day attendant of his el-derly father.

Around 9pm, the officer in-charge of the Chanditala police station, Parthasarathi Majumdar, spotted a purple Zen on the service road off the expressway. “I was curious because the car was fitted with a beacon. I got down with my torchlight and went forward and flashed it inside the car. I found the man embracing a woman on the backseat and the woman struggling to free herself. A driver was at the wheel,” said Majumdar.

Seeing the officer, the driver switched on the beacon and raced towards Singur, 15km away. But as the road was blocked, he had to make a U-turn towards Dankuni and Majumdar’s jeep intercepted it.

“A man emerged and said he was a doctor and the woman was a nurse of a nursing home he was attached to. He told me he was heading to Singur. When I pointed out he was heading in the opposite direction, he started hurling abuses at me. I caught his hand but he jerked free and landed a blow on my head,” said Majumdar.

The officer caught him again and managed to call up Dankuni officer-in-charge Arijit Dasgupta, who arrived with a force and arrested the doctor. Majumdar has bruises on his forehead and right hand.

The woman said Chatterjee had asked her to accompany him after she had finished attending to his father. “He stopped the car on the expressway (about 5km from Uttarpara), joined her on the rear seat, offered her money and embraced her,” said the Dankuni OC.

Serampore subdivisional police officer Ajoy Thakur, to whom Chatterjee confessed to using the beacon illegally, said a doctor couldn’t use a beacon.