Aswani Kumar Dreepaul

Introduction

Aswani Kumar Dreepaul is a UK-registered mental health nurse who was struck off the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register after being convicted of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child. He was arrested on 26 February 2023 while employed as a registered mental health nurse at Broadmoor Hospital, one of the UK’s highest-security psychiatric hospitals, after engaging for around two weeks in sexual communications over social media with a person he believed to be a 13-year-old girl — in fact a decoy operated by an activist group. An NMC Fitness to Practise Committee panel found his fitness to practise impaired by reason of his conviction, concluded that his conduct was incompatible with remaining on the register, and imposed a striking-off order with an 18-month interim suspension.

Background Information

Dreepaul was registered with the NMC under pin number 07F2312E and practised as a registered mental health nurse at Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric institution caring for some of the most vulnerable and complex patients in the country. The regulator categorised his case as a conviction case, meaning the panel’s task was to assess the consequence of a criminal conviction rather than to re-try the underlying allegations.

His case reached the panel at a substantive hearing that started on 12 August 2026, with the decision dated the same day. The hearing came more than three years after his arrest in February 2023 and roughly seventeen months after the conviction itself, a span that reflects the length of criminal proceedings before regulatory action follows.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. Dreepaul’s conviction is a matter of court record: on 25 March 2025 he was convicted of ‘Adult attempt to engage in sexual communication with a child’, he admitted the conviction in his Case Management Form, and the certificate of conviction is conclusive proof of it under Rule 31(2). A guilty plea was entered at an early opportunity in the criminal proceedings. No charge beyond the conviction is asserted here.

The charge before the panel was that, on 25 March 2025, Dreepaul was convicted of the offence of ‘Adult attempt to engage in sexual communication with a child’, contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981, and that his fitness to practise was impaired by reason of that conviction. The panel found Charge 1 proved on the basis of the certificate of conviction, which under Rule 31(2) is conclusive proof, together with Mr Dreepaul’s admission of the conviction in his Case Management Form.

The conviction followed his arrest on 26 February 2023, while he was employed as a registered mental health nurse at Broadmoor Hospital. For around two weeks he had engaged in sexual communications over social media with a person he believed to be a 13-year-old girl, who was in fact a decoy operated by an activist group. The panel treated the offence as an attempt to commit a specified sexual offence of a particularly serious nature involving a person whom Mr Dreepaul believed to be a 13-year-old girl.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel assessed current impairment using the Grant test and found limbs (b) and (c) engaged, meaning the concern rested on the seriousness of the conduct itself and on the protection of the public and the reputation of the profession, rather than on any private corrective measures. It determined that Dreepaul’s fitness to practise was currently impaired on both public protection and public interest grounds. The panel held that his insight remained very limited and that the concerns were behavioural and attitudinal in character — findings that weigh heavily in regulatory decision-making, because attitudinal failings are regarded as far less amenable to correction than isolated clinical errors.

In mitigation, the panel took into account a single feature: Mr Dreepaul pleaded guilty to the criminal offence at an early opportunity. Against that it set significant aggravating features: the conviction concerned an attempt to commit a specified sexual offence of a particularly serious nature involving a person whom Mr Dreepaul believed to be a 13-year-old girl; he demonstrated significant and continuing lack of insight into the seriousness and wider implications of his offending; the offending behaviour was fundamentally attitudinal in nature; and his reflective piece demonstrated little meaningful insight and did not adequately address the underlying behaviour or its wider impact on public confidence in the nursing profession. The panel concluded that his conduct was incompatible with remaining on the register and made a striking-off order.

Current Status

Dreepaul is struck off the NMC register. Being struck off — the regulator calls this erasure — removes the practitioner from the register, and he is no longer permitted to practise this profession in the UK; erasure can be reviewed after a minimum of five years, but is otherwise indefinite. A striking-off order was imposed together with an interim suspension order of 18 months. The decision date is 12 August 2026, with the hearing having started that day, and his case was added to MedicWatch on 17 August 2026.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The striking-off order ends Dreepaul’s registered nursing career unless he successfully seeks restoration after the minimum review period of five years. The offence arose from conduct in his personal life rather than from the clinical care of patients, but the panel found it had a direct bearing on his fitness to hold a nursing registration — particularly given his role as a mental health nurse at Broadmoor Hospital, an institution that houses some of the most vulnerable patients in UK psychiatric care.

The panel’s findings on insight shaped the sanction most directly: his reflective piece demonstrated little meaningful insight and did not adequately address the underlying behaviour or its wider impact on public confidence in the nursing profession, and his insight remained very limited even at the hearing. Because the offending was found to be fundamentally attitudinal in nature, the ordinary regulatory assumption that a practitioner may reform with reflection and remediation had little to work with. The combination of a conviction for an attempt at a particularly serious specified sexual offence and a continuing lack of insight left the panel with the conclusion that only removal from the register could protect the public and maintain confidence in the profession.