PEOPLE who knowingly make others ill could be liable to criminal prosecution after the conviction yesterday of a man who deliberately infected two women with HIV.

Mohammed Dica was the first person to be found guilty of the crime of inflicting “biological” grievous bodily harm by insisting on unprotected sexual intercourse with the women. Doctors say that his victims could die within ten years.

Dica, who was told yesterday to expect a lengthy jail sentence, is also thought not to have long to live.

The case at Inner London Crown Court was the first in an English court for 137 years involving a crime of sexually transmitting a disease and it set a precedent that paves the way for other legal actions over illness inflicted by one person on another.

Charles Foster, a barrister specialising in medical and professional negligence, said: “It could lead to actions against employees who deliberately infect others, whether through sexually transmitted disease or even other kinds of disease passed in the workplace.”

“It is it theoretically possible, for instance, for someone with flu to be criminally liable to people he may infect.” Proof might be difficult, he agreed, with an illness that is so widespread. “But if, for instance, someone knew he had tuberculosis, and came in coughing and spluttering over the person at the next desk, then he could be prosecuted.”

Until now, the law had been based on a 19th-century ruling in which the courts said that even though a woman had been infected with a sexually transmitted disease by her husband, she had consented to intercourse and “therefore in effect had consented to what came with it”.

The women in yesterday’s case had both consented to intercourse with Dica, but had asked him to wear a condom. He had refused, claiming that he had had a vasectomy, that he did not like them and that he “had problems” with them.

His first victim, a 36-year-old woman, said that he had been caring and “said all the right words”, but after every lovemaking session, he would cry: “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. God forgive me.” Six months into their relationship, she discovered that she was HIV positive.

His second victim was a mother of two in her thirties who thought she had found the man of her dreams in Dica. Yesterday she was in court to see him convicted and afterwards she welcomed the verdict, saying: “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He destroyed my life. My sentence has just begun.”

The case was the first in England and Wales in modern times, but a man was convicted in Scotland two years ago of recklessly passing on HIV. His lover made history when she was awarded £22,000 by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.

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