An anaesthetist has been arrested for allegedly raping a pregnant woman during a C-section and it is also believed he may have carried out attacks on two more mothers on the same day.

Giovanni Quintella Bezerra, 32, was arrested on suspicion of rape after he was allegedly secretly filmed orally raping a woman after he heavily sedated her at the Hospital da Mulher in São João de Meriti, Rio de Janeiro.

The woman’s husband was told to leave the room and only found out about what had happened to his wife when he recognised the doctor on television after his arrest.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said delegate Barbara Lomba, who is in charge of investigating the case.

The woman told her family she thought she was having a hallucination at the time of the sexual attack.

Hospital staff were reportedly worried about the amount of drugs Bezerra was giving to his patients. The doctor would use so much anaesthetic that the mothers would be unable to hold their babies after delivering.

So, suspicious staff members fitted a secret camera to see what he was up to.

They were horrified to see him sexually assaulting the woman.

He reportedly assaulted her sexually for almost ten minutes.

Staff members who recorded the rape said the doctor had already carried out two similar procedures that day, with police investigating whether those two women were also victims of attack.

In the second operation on Sunday, July 10, employees said Giovanni “wore an open cloak on himself, widening his silhouette, and positioned himself in a way that also prevented anyone from seeing the patient from the neck up.”

In most C-sections the woman is not fully sedated during the procedure, but the women who went under the knife earlier in the day said they were fully unconscious during the procedure.

One of the patients said: “The only thing I remember from the surgery is his voice. He kept talking softly in my ear, it bothered me. He asked if I was okay.”

Two other people who said they were also Bezerra’s patients have arrived at the police station in Brazil since the accusations came to light.

“Giovanni, still positioned towards the patient’s neck and head, started, with his left arm bent, slow movements back and forth,” the witness said, according to G1 Rio de Janeiro.

“From the movement and the curvature of the arm, it looked like he was holding the patient’s head towards his pelvic region.”

The doctor was earlier transferred to the prison of Benfica.

The custody hearing of the doctor was held on Tuesday, July 12.

He is facing charges of rape with a prison sentence ranging from 8 to 15 years in Brazil.