Kiran Farooq

Introduction

Kiran Farooq is a nurse who was registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) under number 13I2739S. On 11 September 2026, at a substantive hearing of the NMC’s Fitness to Practise Committee that started and concluded the same day, the panel determined that she be struck off the register — the sanction formally described as an erasure order. The decision followed her convictions on 4 August 2025 at the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow for being concerned in the supply of cocaine and ecstasy, for which she received a four-year prison sentence after pleading guilty. An interim suspension was imposed to cover the appeal period before the striking-off order takes effect.

Background Information

The published determination records little about Farooq’s personal or professional history beyond her status as a nurse on the NMC register. It identifies her by her registration number and records the criminal proceedings that brought her before the committee: two convictions entered on 4 August 2025 at the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow, guilty pleas to both counts, and the four-year custodial sentence that followed. No details of her nursing career, specialism, workplace or length of service are set out in the published decision, and no separate regulatory charges arising from her clinical practice were put to the panel.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. Kiran Farooq’s convictions on two counts of being concerned in the supply of cocaine and ecstasy, entered on her guilty pleas, are a matter of court record at the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow. The panel’s conclusions on impairment are regulatory determinations of the NMC Fitness to Practise Committee, not criminal convictions.

The controversy underlying the case is a pair of convictions for drug supply involvement. On 4 August 2025, Farooq was convicted at the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow of being concerned in the supply of cocaine and of being concerned in the supply of ecstasy — both Class A controlled drugs under UK law. The decision records that she pleaded guilty to the offences and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Because the case came before the committee as a conviction case, the panel did not need to make new findings on disputed criminal facts: the convictions themselves were the established starting point, and the hearing proceeded directly to the question of whether Farooq’s fitness to practise was currently impaired by reason of those convictions.

The panel found that Farooq’s fitness to practise was impaired on both public protection and public interest grounds. It acknowledged expressly that the offending took place outside her nursing practice and had not directly put patients at risk. Even so, it concluded that convictions of this seriousness were incompatible with continued registration, citing the wider need to protect the public and to maintain confidence in the profession and its regulator. The panel also found insufficient insight or remediation on Farooq’s part, a matter that weighed heavily in its assessment of current impairment and of the risk she would pose if allowed to remain on the register.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The immediate consequence was the four-year prison sentence imposed by the High Court of Justiciary on 4 August 2025. The regulatory consequence followed more than a year later, when the matter came before the NMC Fitness to Practise Committee on 11 September 2026. The panel determined that the appropriate sanction was a striking-off order — noting, importantly, that this was a sanction imposed by the committee rather than a negotiated or agreed removal from the register. Because a striking-off order does not take effect immediately, the panel imposed an interim suspension covering the appeal period, so that Farooq is not permitted to practise while the order awaits final effect.

The determination is a regulatory record rather than a survey of media coverage. It sets out the convictions, the panel’s impairment findings and its sanction reasoning, and it records the panel’s express acknowledgement that the offending occurred outside practice and involved no direct risk to patients. No press commentary, victim statements or public responses are recorded in the published decision, and no public statements by Farooq are recorded in it beyond the fact of her guilty pleas at court.

Current Status

As determined on 11 September 2026, Kiran Farooq is struck off the NMC register, with an interim suspension in force during the appeal period before the striking-off order takes final effect. Striking off means removal from the register: the practitioner may no longer work as a nurse in the UK, and continuing to practise while removed would itself be a criminal offence. Removal from the register is otherwise indefinite, though a former registrant may apply for restoration after a minimum period has elapsed, and any such application would be decided on the circumstances then prevailing. Unless such an application were to succeed, Farooq cannot work as a registered nurse in the United Kingdom.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The striking-off order ends Farooq’s ability to work as a nurse in the UK and closes a sequence that ran from her convictions at the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow in August 2025, through a four-year prison sentence, to removal from the register in September 2026. The panel’s route to that outcome turned on the seriousness of involvement in supplying Class A drugs and on what it found missing: insight into the wrongdoing and evidence of remediation. It accepted that the offending was unconnected to her nursing work and that patients were not directly endangered, but held that the offences were fundamentally incompatible with continued registration and that wider public protection and confidence in the profession required removal. The combination of a custodial sentence and erasure makes the consequences, in practical terms, both immediate and long-lasting: she serves her sentence with her registration already determined, and her return to nursing would require a successful application for restoration years down the line.

Sources

• MedicWatch, “Erasure — NMC orders Kiran Farooq struck off following drug supply convictions”, 11 September 2026. source