A Bradford psychiatrist diagnosed a woman as psychotic after chatting to her through a window.

Doctor Sasi Bhusan Mahapatra, told solicitors the woman was mentally ill after being asked to provide evidence in divorce proceedings, a disciplinary hearing was told yesterday.

Doctor Mahapatra, of Woodlands Drive, Apperley Bridge, denied serious professional misconduct when he appeared before a disciplinary committee of the General Medical Council in London yesterday.

He admits he failed to examine the woman or take a medical history and that he wrote to the husband's solicitor saying she was suffering from paranoid psychosis.

He denies he discussed her medical history with her husband's solicitors, her church minister or her brother.

Ms Irena Ray-Crosby, for the GMC, said the woman's husband, referred to only as Mr A, first approached his family doctor in December 1993 after his wife began divorce proceedings.

Mr and Mrs A are both Jehovah's Witnesses and did not believe in divorce, so Mrs A's petition for divorce therefore led to greater tensions between the couple.

Mr A had been convinced his wife was suffering from mental illness and put her under considerable pressure to undergo psychiatric treatment.

The family GP asked Dr Mahapatra to assess Mrs A's mental state.

The GMC disciplinary committee was told that Dr Mahapatra visited Mrs A at her home without an appointment or announcing his arrival on December 15, 1993.

When he knocked on the door Mrs A had just got out of the shower and was in her dressing-gown. She refused to let him in.

She told the hearing: "I did not like the way he came to the house unannounced and without an appointment and the way I had been discussed by my husband and GP without me."

Dr Mahapatra did not have face-to-face contact with Mrs A but talked to her through a window.

Following the visit he wrote to the family GP saying he had failed to persuade her to see him but, from information obtained from her husband and two sons, she was clearly in need of psychiatric assessment.

In October 1994, without further examination, Dr Mahapatra wrote to solicitors Harrison & Tordoff acting for Mr A in the divorce proceedings, stating that Mrs A was suffering from paranoid psychosis and was being extremely unreasonable.

Dr Mahapatra asaid the information obtained from both Mrs A's GP and Mr A had led him to believe that she would fall in the category of paranoid psychosis. He said: " It is a shame that I did not have the opportunity to examine her."

He accepted that he failed to make it clear that he had never examined Mrs A and that the information about her was based on second-hand information.

He said: "In hindsight, I regret that I did not make it clear in my report and regret if it caused distress to Mrs A."

The hearing continues.