A foreign nurse who sexually assaulted a pregnant patient has avoided deportation because of his so-called right to family life – even though his wife and children may have returned to India

Milind Sanade was jailed for 12 months after he groped a vulnerable 21-year-old he was examining for signs of breast cancer. Following his release from prison, Indian national Sanade, 36, should have been deported. But he appealed on the grounds of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, after fathering two children in England. He was granted leave to stay because his family life deserved "respect". But neighbors at his £165,000 terraced house in Chelmsford, Essex, said that his wife, Veni, had returned to India. British MPs said that this casts doubt on Home Secretary Theresa May’s pledge to stop 400 foreigners a year abusing Article 8 by claiming that they have a wife, girlfriend or child in Britain. Sanade, who was also cautioned for assaulting an 87-year-old man when he worked in a care home, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the pregnant patient at a hospital in Harlow, Essex, in February 2010. In an effort to hide his crime, he made entries in his victim’s medical file so that if she complained she would be viewed as emotionally unstable. At the time of the assault, his wife, who is also a nurse, was heavily pregnant with their second child. Sanade was jailed for a year, ordered to sign the sex offenders register for ten years, banned from working in care and struck off the nursing register. Under the British Borders Act of 2007, foreign criminals jailed for a year or more must be deported unless there are exceptional circumstances whereby the right to family life would be violated. Sanade, who was released from prison six months into his sentence, came to England in July 2003. He married in Bangalore in 2005 and was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain in July 2009. In October 2011, a black rapist was allowed to cheat deportation because of his so-called right to family life – even though he had abandoned his wife. Rohan Winfield, 38, from Barbados, was not even entitled to be in Britain when he carried out the assault in November 2008.