EXCLUSIVE
A ruthless nurse at an aged care facility laughed as she reduced a traumatised dementia patient to tears by slamming a therapy doll’s head against a table – knowing the elderly woman thought it was a real baby.
Sudiksha Ahuja then attempted to cover up her brutal baby-murdering prank by trying to convince a junior colleague who witnessed the sick prank to lie about what she had seen.
This week the young nurse was found guilty of “cruel and deplorable” professional misconduct by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal and now faces calls to revoke her registration.
Despite the gravity of the findings, Ahuja, known as ‘Sudi’ to friends, insists she has been ‘too busy’ caring for vulnerable patients in her new job to read out the verdict against her.
“This is actually my first day back at work after the holidays,” she told Daily Mail Australia when contacted at Pearl Home Care – Mornington Peninsula on Wednesday.
“I haven’t had a chance to read the decision yet. I’ll do so later today if I have time. Please don’t call again.”
Ahuja had been working as a registered nurse at the Junee Multi-Purpose Service Centre residential aged care facility when she pulled off her cruel prank in late 2021.
Sudiksha Ahuja pretended to have smashed a baby’s head into pieces by slamming a therapy doll’s face into a table, knowing that a distressed dementia patient watching believed it was all real.
The sickening act of ‘baby murder’ unfolded while Ahuja was working at the Junee Multi-Purpose Services Centre near Wagga Wagga in Riverina, New South Wales.
The aged care facility, located about 30 minutes’ drive north of Wagga Wagga in Riverina, New South Wales, is home to about 30 elderly residents.
She provides “Doll Fun Therapy” to several of her patients suffering from various stages of dementia.
“Doll distraction therapy is used to help women remember the time when they were mothers, and this helps calm them by thinking that they are holding their baby and caring for it,” the court said in its ruling on Monday.
It emerged that Ahuja knew that one of her patients, an 82-year-old man suffering from advanced dementia, “believed the dolls were real babies” and that she liked to “dress them up and tuck them into bed” at night.
According to an ‘incident report’ filed by a fellow nurse, ‘Sudi Ahuja was seen tormenting’ the patient after being allegedly incited by a colleague in the facility’s canteen shortly after 3:00 pm on December 9, 2021.
‘(The patient) loves to ‘take care of’ the dolls in the dining room, because she thinks they are babies and loves them,’ the colleague noted in her report.
‘The two staff members intentionally forced (the patient) to watch while they slammed the dolls’ heads against the table.
‘They knew this would provoke a response from (the patient), who was clearly upset and distressed and repeatedly asking them to stop.
“I asked them to stop three times, while they continued doing it and laughed at the (patient’s) response.”
Another witness recalled watching in horror as Ahuja “grabbed the doll by the back of the neck… then walked over to the dining room table, lifted the doll up and slammed it hard, face-first into the table.”
The patient was so traumatized by the callous act that she began to cry and then continued to visit the dining room in her nightgown to check that “the babies were safe.”
Elderly dementia patient believed therapy doll was her real newborn baby
Despite a total of six witnesses testifying against him, Ahuja told the court that they had all misinterpreted the situation.
Ahuja claimed it was the elderly dementia patient who created a scene after accidentally dropping one of her beloved dolls on the floor.
The nurse insisted she had only been laughing in an attempt to cheer up the 82-year-old woman as she tried to fix her broken wrist.
The court rejected Ahuja’s explanation, finding that she deliberately “banged” the doll against the table for her own amusement, having worked in the home long enough to know that her dementia patient “regarded the dolls as her babies.”
“(Ahuja) did so knowing that (the patient) believed the dolls were real babies and with the intention of provoking a response,” the court said in its ruling.
‘(She) engaged in this conduct for the purpose of amusing herself and (her colleague) at the patient’s expense.
‘There is no doubt that (Ahuja) and (his colleague) were laughing during the conduct they were carrying out.
‘We do not accept that the laughter was intended to reassure the patient, improve her mood or cheer her up.
“She thought the situation was funny and laughed at the patient’s distress.”
The court said Ahuja’s “attempt to collude” with one of the witnesses by contacting her on Snapchat and unsuccessfully trying to convince her to lie about the incident to avoid liability “increases his culpability.”
He found her guilty of both unsatisfactory professional conduct and professional misconduct.
Ahuja, who ended up at the Junee centre less than two months after the incident, moved to another state in the wake of the scandal and has been working as a case manager at the Pearl Home Care centre in the town of Mornington, about an hour south of Melbourne.
The Registered Nurse He did not respond when asked whether his new employers – who boast of “treating older Australians with dignity and care” on their website – were aware of the investigation into his conduct at his former workplace.
The Health Care Complaints Commission, which prosecuted Ahuja’s case, has called for her nursing registration to be cancelled and for her to be banned from providing healthcare services with a non-review period of between six and 12 months.
The Court will determine the appropriate sentence after a new hearing on October 14.
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