Arkansas doctor indicted in car bombing of state board chairman

An Arkansas internist was indicted by a federal grand jury in January for a car bomb that maimed the chairman of the state's medical board, according to court documents released last month.

The indictment alleges 51-year-old Randeep Mann, MD, used "a weapon of mass destruction" against a white Lexus on February 4 last year. Although unnamed in the indictment, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas named the owner of the car as Trent Pierce, MD, a family physician in West Memphis, who suffered injuries to his face and body in the explosion, including the loss of an eye.

Pierce and the medical board twice sanctioned Mann for overprescribing narcotics, according to several newspapers in Arkansas and Tennessee. In 2006, the board permanently revoked Mann's right to prescribe narcotics after 10 of his patients died from drug overdoses.

Mann has been in federal custody since March 2009.. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.