London: Two surgeons, including a senior medical registrar from India, who were cleared of killing a patient whose only healthy kidney was wrongly removed, have been accused at a disciplinary hearing of "abject, needless and inexcusable" negligence.

Leighton Davies QC, for the General Medical Council, said the actions of consultant urologist John Gethin Roberts and medical registrar Mahesh Goel in carrying out an operation on John Graham Reeves, 69, fell far below the standard of care to be expected of reasonable and competent surgeons.

The GMC's professional conduct committee heard yesterday that the operation on Reeves took place at the Prince Philip hospital in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire on January 24, 2000.

Roberts of Pastoral Way, Sketty, Swansea, oversaw the operation and Goel, who is now in India and was not present at the hearing, carried out the procedure.

Reeves died on March 1, five weeks after the operation, despite two further operations and emergency dialysis.

Both surgeons were found not guilty of manslaughter under the judge's direction at Cardiff crown court in June 2002.