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An optometry student from Wetherby in Yorkshire has been suspended for three months by a General Optical Council fitness to practise committee following a conviction for actual bodily harm.

Nathan Sivajoti was convicted at Harrogate Magistrates Court on March 5, 2009 for what committee chair Lady Margaret Wall described as a 'serious and nasty' offence on an 'entirely innocent member of the public'.

Sivajoti, who had been drinking, took part in an attack on a young man at 4am, kicking him twice while he was lying on the ground, while a 19-year-old undergraduate.

Finding his fitness to practise impaired, Lady Wall said that this was 'unacceptable behaviour in anyone and not to be tolerated in a student member of a caring profession'.

However in imposing the ban she recognised that the incident was 'totally out of character', adding that the registrant was 'a hard working young man who has involved himself in charitable endeavours'.

Sivajoti informed his tutor promptly of his arrest and voluntarily removed himself from his academic studies at university. Recognising that drink was an issue, he also took steps to prevent it affecting his behaviour in future.

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