Call girls and coke surgeon's undoing

Dr Suresh Surendranath Nair is led into the rear of Central Local Court in Sydney. Photo / Daily Telegraph.

Suresh Surendranath Nair appeared to have it all: he was an eminent brain surgeon with an annual income of several million dollars and a luxury apartment on Sydney Harbour.

But Nair had two addictions - cocaine and call girls - and they caused his downfall, it is alleged, as well as visiting tragedy on two families. Two women died of cocaine overdoses after the 41-year-old supplied them with large quantities of the drug during group sex sessions, a Sydney court heard this week.

Nair was committed for trial, charged with the murder of Suellen Domingues-Zaupa, 23, in November 2009, and the manslaughter of another prostitute, Victoria McIntyre, 22, nine months earlier.

A forensic scientist told Downing Street Local Court that McIntyre had one of the highest blood-cocaine readings he had encountered in 32 years in the job.

Sydney media reported that medical authorities were aware of his drug problem as long ago as 2004 but allowed him to continue practising at the Nepean Hospital in western Sydney.

The court heard evidence from a string of escort agents who worked with McIntyre and Brazilian-born Domingues-Zaupa.

One of them, Carmen Hernandez-Cardona, who accompanied Domingues-Zaupa to Nair's flat, testified that he refused to call an ambulance after she had a seizure in his bedroom following a four-hour cocaine binge.

Hernandez-Cardona, from Colombia, also claimed that the former neurosurgeon - who was suspended from duty only after the second death - offered her thousands of dollars to keep quiet. Rather than summon help, she said, he snorted more cocaine as Domingues-Zaupa lay naked and dying on his bed.

He tried to give her a sedative and some water, telling Hernandez-Cardona: "I'm a doctor, trust me, she will get better."

Another call girl, identified only as Emily, was one of five women hired by Nair the night McIntyre died in February 2009. After taking 15 lines of cocaine, with Nair urging her to "do more, do more, do more", she went out to buy a sedative, Xanax. She told the court that when she returned, she found an ambulance and police officers at the Elizabeth Bay apartment.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Malaysian-born, Australian-trained surgeon was suspended by the NSW Medical Board in 2004 after failing mandatory drug urine tests. Permitted to return to his post under supervision, he was suspended again in 2008 following a medical negligence complaint but was re-employed last year.

While under investigation in relation to McIntyre's death, Nair continued working at the Nepean. The Medical Board has since said it was not aware of the first overdose incident until he was arrested over the second. Remanded in custody in January after breaching his bail conditions, which required him not to take cocaine or associate with sex workers (police spotted him doing both), he was "savagely" attacked in jail by a fellow prisoner.

Hernandez-Cardona told the magistrate, Carolyn Barkell, that Nair paid her A$26,000 ($34,300) for the night, including taking part in group sex without a condom. All the participants stripped off, she said, then used a A$50 note to snort lines of cocaine which she described as "strong ... close to pure".

Alarmed when her colleague began to shake uncontrollably and struggle for breath, she tried to call the emergency services, but the surgeon took her mobile phone, telling her Domingues-Zaupa just needed to sleep.

The Colombian said: "I put a pillow [under] her head and she was trying to breathe ... blood and saliva [were] coming out of her mouth."

Domingues-Zaupa stopped shaking and her face turned purple, upon which Nair tried to revive her. However, Hernandez-Cardona said: "It was too late. She was dead."

The brain surgeon continued to take cocaine, "acting like nothing had happened" and appearing "relaxed". He then telephoned two men, who turned up at the flat.

"He said to me [that] I don't go to anyone, I don't talk to anyone and he give me A$50,000," Hernandez-Cardona said.

"I say no. If I accept this money, it's ... like I kill her, and I didn't."

Timothy Green, an emergency ward doctor at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, examined the Brazilian woman's body. He told the court that "any medical practitioner" - but particularly a neurosurgeon - would have known at the first sign of a seizure that an ambulance was needed. He said there would have been a 20-minute window during which paramedics might have saved Domingues-Zaupa.

Juliet Lancaster, another prostitute who was at the apartment that night, told the court she snorted 25 lines of cocaine but had no qualms about taking drugs with Nair. "He was a doctor; I was in pretty safe hands," she said.

At an earlier bail hearing, a psychiatrist, Rosalie Wilcox, testified that Nair's cocaine habit helped him to cope with stress, and with frequently having to deal with "life or death situations".

The Herald reported that two medical negligence complaints were made against the surgeon in recent years. He was accused of botching two spinal operations, one of which led to a patient needing corrective surgery, while the other left a woman incontinent and with a partially paralysed leg.