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Former doctor sent to trial on sex-related charges

STEVE BRUCE sbruce@herald.ca @Steve_courts

A former Halifax doctor has been committed to stand trial in Nova Scotia Supreme Court on charges of choking and sexually assaulting a woman in September 2020.

Arshjot Buttar, 30, is charged with sexual assault, overcoming resistance to the commission of an offence by choking, and committing an assault by choking.

A preliminary inquiry sat for two days in April in Halifax provincial court and wrapped up last Friday, with Judge Claudine Macdonald sending Buttar on to Supreme Court, where he has elected to be tried by a judge alone.

Buttar, who now lives in British Columbia, will be arraigned in Supreme Court on June 2.

The identity of the complainant is protected by a publication ban. She alleges she was sexually assaulted at an apartment on Tower Road in Halifax on Sept. 5, 2020.

Buttar was arrested four days later after turning himself in at Halifax Regional Police headquarters. He was arraigned before a justice of the peace and released on conditions.

He is prohibited from having contact with the complainant, had to surrender his passport and can only have a cellphone if he provides the number to police.

When police announced the charges in September 2020, they said Buttar and the woman were acquaintances.

Buttar, a 2019 graduate of the University of British Columbia medical school, was doing a residency in family medicine through Dalhousie University when he was charged.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia online registry of doctors lists Buttar as temporarily inactive. He took a leave of absence from his postgraduate training licence Sept. 11, 2020, and has undertaken to refrain from clinical practice.

OPINION

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2022-05-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

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