A fake doctor who targeted women cancer patients over the phone and persuaded them to examine themselves intimately was jailed for six years on Friday.

A large number of women from Hounslow, Ealing, Hillingdon and Harrow were left terrified and traumatised by calls from Davinder Kelly, 43, who told many of them they only had a short time to live.

Sometimes children answered the phone and they too were told they had cancer and should undergo his tests.

Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson ordered Kelly of Pinewood Avenue, Hillingdon, to remain on the sex offenders' register for life and made him subject to a sexual offences prevention order banning him from any contact with children at work or otherwise.

Kelly was found guilty of three charges of causing people to engage in sexual activity, and one of being a public nuisance by making malicious, threatening and obscene telephone calls between October 2003 and May 2004.

He was cleared of four other similar charges on the direction of the judge following defence submissions.

Kelly, who claimed through counsel it was not him making the calls but that his mobile phone had been stolen or the SIM card cloned, did not go into the witness box.

A forensic expert said it was not possible to clone a SIM card without an industrial level computer and he had never seen it done.

Prosecutor Constance Briscoe told the jury: "The defendant pretended to be a doctor and persuaded a number of adults and children to participate in various sexual acts on themselves and sometimes each other.

"He explained to each of his victims that he was trying to detect cancer."

All the adults had been diagnosed with cancer or had received treatment or been tested for various forms of the condition. Ms Briscoe said: "They or members of their family had all been to hospital recently."

When Kelly was tracked down by police it was discovered that his wife worked in the medical records department at the Central Middlesex Hospital where she had access to the records of patients there and in Northwick Park Hospital. Her husband was in the habit of going in to help her with the filing.

Matters came to light when alarmed patients contacted their doctors and in January 2004 Dr Sunil Shah from Ealing Primary Care Trust alerted police.

Police traced the traumatising calls to Kelly's pay-as-you-go mobile phone. Some of the calls, when women were told to strip off, lie on the bed, and conduct sexual examinations of themselves and each other, lasted as long as two and a half hours.

Kelly and his wife, Kiranjoth, were both arrested but his wife was later released without charge.

Detective Sergeant Lilian Key said "This has been a three-year investigation which has meant that several victims have had this in the forefront of their minds for a long time.

"I hope these verdicts will go some way towards helping them reach a form of closure."

DS Key said the victims were acutely embarrassed and very traumatised when they realised what had happened.