Peter Beale claims to have misread test results of boy (10) he operated on, court told
He is charged with the murder of three children that he had performed surgery on, as well as for fraud with the State alleging that the surgeries were not necessary and that his conduct was reckless.
Murder-accused paediatric surgeon Peter Beale appeared in the Johannesburg High Court on 29 January 2024. Picture: Katlego Jiyane/Eyewitness News
JOHANNESBURG - A father whose son died after now murder-accused paediatric surgeon Peter Beale operated on, has labelled as “a fabrication of facts” the doctor’s assertion that he misread the test results.
Beale’s trial continued in the Johannesburg High Court on Friday.
He is charged with the murder of three children that he had performed surgery on, as well as for fraud with the State alleging that the surgeries were not necessary and that his conduct was reckless.
Beale is accused of misrepresenting to 10-year-old Zayaan Sayed’s parents that he had a condition called intestinal metaplasia and required the surgery that ended up killing him.
A biopsy report he had obtained beforehand explicitly states that the little boy did not have the condition.
In his plea explanation, Beale said it was not intentional and that he misread the results.
But asked about this on the stand on Friday, Zayaan’s father, Mohammadh Sayed, described it as fabrication of the facts.
He highlighted that the finding was repeated twice in the report and further questioned why the report wasn’t shared with anyone else, including him or his now ex-wife, until after his son’s surgery and death.
Sayed completed his evidence-in-chief on Friday and is due back on the stand on Monday for cross-examination.