Melwinraj Manirajan

Introduction

Melwinraj Manirajan is a registered nurse who was struck off the UK nursing register in August 2026 after a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel found that he had sexually assaulted a junior colleague and that his fitness to practise was impaired by misconduct. The panel concluded that on or around 14 April 2022 he put his finger or fingers inside the colleague’s vagina without her consent, that he did not stop when she said no and tried to remove his hand, and that the conduct was sexually motivated. Manirajan denied the charges throughout the regulatory process and continues to deny them; the findings described here are a regulator’s civil-standard determinations, not a criminal conviction.

Background Information

Manirajan was registered with the NMC under the registration number 20C0350O and worked as a nurse in the United Kingdom. The colleague at the centre of the case, identified in the determination only as Colleague A, was a junior colleague. The allegation that ended his career reached the regulator not through his employer but through Essex Police, following a criminal complaint about the same incident. The NMC brought three charges arising from the alleged assault, along with a broader allegation that his fitness to practise was impaired by reason of his misconduct.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. Every finding below is an adjudicated outcome of an NMC fitness-to-practise panel applying the civil standard — the balance of probabilities — following a full contested hearing. It is not a criminal conviction: the police referred the matter to the NMC after the criminal case was closed at the evidential stage of the Full Code test, and no criminal charge was brought. Manirajan denied the charges and was entitled to do so; the accounts of the incident are contested, and his denials are recorded here.

The NMC alleged that, in relation to Colleague A, Manirajan on or around 14 April 2022 on one or more occasion put his finger or fingers inside her vagina without her consent; that he did not stop when she said ’no’ and/or tried to remove his hand; and that his actions were sexually motivated in that he was seeking sexual gratification. He denied the charges, and the case was heard at a contested substantive hearing that ran from 3 to 13 August 2026.

The panel found charges 1, 2 and 3 proved on the balance of probabilities. It found Colleague A to be a credible witness whose account was clear, consistent on the pertinent facts and supported by near-contemporaneous text messages; by contrast, it found Manirajan’s alternative account, and his explanation of those messages, “incoherent and lacking in credibility”. The panel expressly addressed the shadow of the abandoned criminal case: noting the different standards of proof in criminal and regulatory proceedings, it placed “no reliance” on the police case-closure report. That distinction explains why a case closed by police without charge could still be proved before the regulator — the criminal threshold is higher, and the panel assessed the evidence for itself. On sanction, it found the conduct amounted to serious sexual misconduct and a significant departure from the Code, citing standards 1.1, 1.3, 20.1, 20.3 and 20.5, while finding no evidence that patients were put at risk.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The determination was published by the NMC and recorded by MedicWatch, an independent registry of UK healthcare regulators’ decisions, on 17 August 2026. Because the criminal investigation closed without charge, the regulatory hearing was the first public forum in which the allegation was tested and determined, and the panel’s findings — including that the assault was sexually motivated — became the authoritative public account of what happened. The consequences were severe: the panel found his fitness to practise currently impaired on both public protection and public interest grounds, treated the case as a “highest risk case”, and directed the registrar to strike him off the register. An interim suspension order of 18 months was imposed to cover the appeal period.

Current Status

As of the decision date of 13 August 2026, Manirajan has been struck off the NMC register and is no longer permitted to practise as a nurse in the UK. Erasure is otherwise indefinite, though it can be reviewed after a minimum of five years. He remained entitled to appeal the panel’s decision during the period covered by the interim suspension order; beyond that, no criminal proceedings followed the 2022 allegation, which had been closed by Essex Police at the evidential stage.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The striking-off order ended Manirajan’s nursing career in the United Kingdom. The panel found that his insight remained limited four years after the incident: because he continued to deny the conduct and his reflections made no reference to Colleague A or the harm caused to her, it concluded he exhibited “deep-seated attitudinal issues” with a risk of repetition — the core of the public protection case against him. The aggravating features it identified were his limited insight, the effect of his actions on Colleague A (recorded in a private session of the hearing) and the attitudinal concerns raised by his misconduct. The panel did weigh mitigation in his favour: he provided a significant number of positive testimonials from people who knew of the allegations and who attested to his good character and competent practice. In the panel’s assessment, those testimonials could not offset the seriousness of sexually motivated misconduct toward a junior colleague, paired with a continued denial that left his fitness to practise irretrievably impaired.