Boots pharmacist cleared of maliciously spiking trainee’s water

• Keerthi Mohan
• 08 May, 2019

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By: Keerthi Mohan

A PHARMACIST from Boots who put a laxative into his trainee’s water bottle has been cleared of doing it maliciously.

Admitting to slipping the drug into Farah Abdulquader’s water bottle, Shahan Mir said he did it to show the dangers of bringing a water bottle into the area where drugs were being handled.

A jury at Birmingham crown court found Mir not guilty of causing Abdulquader to take a noxious thing with intent to annoy her.

Abdulquader had been under Mir’s supervision for six months and he had been unhappy about her bringing her own water into the dispensary.

He put a small amount of Lactulose, a liquid laxative, into Abdulquader’s water bottle when she left it unattended. After she took a sip form it, she realised it was too sweet and spat it out.

Abdulquader said she later suffered from mild diarrhoea and was sick twice.

“I thought this was an appropriate way of showing her the dangers of having fluid and drink around the medicines,” said the father of two.

He was dismissed from Boots and had not worked since.

After the verdict, Mir’s solicitor Manjinder Kang said: “He has not worked for 12 months and his wife has recently given birth to their second child.

“It has been a traumatic and stressful time for him. He has maintained from the outset that what he did was not a wise thing to do, but then hindsight is a wonderful thing.

“He is relieved and a weight has been taken off his shoulders. He is delighted the jury have seen the evidence for what it really was. he accepted his behaviour was not the ideal way of doing things.

“Throughout he had no intention of causing any harm, injury or annoyance.”