In a bizarre incident, a 49-year-old vascular surgeon from Cornwall, UK has been accused of purposefully having his own legs removed in a bid to cash in £500,000 (around ₹5.4 crore) insurance policies, reports Daily Mail.

Hopper, who was employed by Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, allegedly said he lost his leg to sepsis, a life-threatening infection. But it is believed officials think her act was part of a fraud plan to dupe two insurers– Arriva Group for £235,622 and Old Mutual for £231,031.

The case took a horrifying turn when it emerged that Hopper apparently bought videos from a site called The Eunuch Maker, which featured videos of limb removals. They also argue that he exhorted Marius Gustavson, the head of an extreme body-modification group, to carry out injurious procedures on other people.

The new allegations, which police say took place from August 2018 to December 2020, saw Hopper charged with further counts of encouraging or assisting in the manufacture of an intoxicant causing grievous bodily harm.

Hopper had worked as a surgeon at Royal Cornwall Hospitals since 2013. He was suspended from his work after being arrested in March 2023. The hospital, in a statement released, confirmed that the charges are not related to his work, and no evidence has been found of risk to patients while under his care.

Furthermore, Hopper is now suspended from the medical register in the UK and has been since December 2023, preventing him from practicing medicine.

Hopper detailed his rather frightening state of mind in an interview with the BBC. A surgeon accustomed to amputations, he conceded his fear of the idea of power tools operating on him.

His recovery after losing his legs, he said, had been surprisingly swift. Although doctors believed it would take three months before he would be able to walk, Hopper reported that he was able to do so in about three hours. He even said I’m „more active now than I was before,“ a sentence that let many jaws drop in light of the accusations.

The charges against Hopper present a patchwork of a doctor embroiled in an odd and potentially criminal scheme. The case has made headlines, not because of the substantial insurance amount, but for the unsettling links to extreme body modification culture.

Also Read: Parenting Mistakes: Things You Should Not Talk About Infront Of Kids

Even as the case winds its way through the courts, questions persist about Hopper’s reasons for infiltrating and how deep his ties with Gustavson’s group really were.

Share

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•