NEW DELHI, INDIA — Police in India have apprehended a man accused of masquerading as a British doctor, alleging that surgeries he performed resulted in the deaths of seven patients.
Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav – also known as Dr N John Camm – was employed as a cardiologist at a missionary hospital located in Madhya Pradesh state.
Authorities accuse him of fraud, cheating, and forgery, contending that the 53-year-old, who worked as a doctor for nearly two decades, fabricated his medical credentials. They are also investigating claims that he fraudulently added the name of Prof John Camm, a distinguished cardiologist at the UK’s St George Hospital, to his own identity to enhance his credibility.
Mr Yadav has denied all accusations. On Monday, just hours before his arrest, he issued a legal notice demanding 50 million rupees ($582,985; £454,969) from two dozen individuals and publishers for asserting that he impersonated “some other cardiologist.”
The Mission Hospital in Damoh city, where Mr Yadav was employed for a brief period, has stated that they had no knowledge of his alleged fraudulent qualifications. “Nobody suspected him of being a fake doctor. He was good at his job and acted like a big-time professor,” a hospital official told The Indian Express newspaper.
The case initially surfaced in February when a child welfare committee in Damoh brought the deaths to the attention of district officials.
“We got suspicious about his expertise and checked his credentials online and found that he had cases against him in at least three states,” claimed Deepak Tiwari, president of the district Child Welfare Committee.
Subsequent investigations revealed that Mr Yadav had resigned from his position at the hospital earlier that month and had “gone missing” without providing any explanation.
He was arrested in the city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh state on Monday evening. “The accused doctor had worked on a total of 64 cases, including 45 cases of angioplasty, which led to seven patient deaths,” the district’s police chief Shrut Kirti Somvanshi told this publication.
While the authenticity of his degrees remains unclear, police suspect they are likely forged due to the absence of crucial details, such as the unique registration number typically assigned to each student.
This is not the first instance where Mr Yadav’s identity has come under scrutiny. In a 2019 blog post, he “claimed” that he received training in the UK under Prof A John Camm and joined St George’s Hospital in 2002 as an “Interventional Cardiologist.” He further claimed to have returned to India in 2003 to work at a leading heart hospital in Delhi and subsequently worked in the US, Germany, and Spain.
In a post shared in 2021, Mr Yadav “wrote” about developing a 5,000-bed John Camm Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in the western state of Rajasthan, claiming, “The hospital is being developed under [the] leadership of Dr N John Camm, renowned Interventional Cardiologist from Germany, and will [be] spread over 100 acres of land and will have world class research and tissue labs.”
However, “public records” indicate that he registered four companies in the UK in 2018 under the name Dr Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, which he later changed to Dr Narendra John Camm.
In 2023, a prominent fact-checker in India also “raised questions” about his credentials after he allegedly created an X (formerly Twitter) account using the name “Prof N John Camm.” Following the viral spread of some of his posts, the real Prof Camm issued a statement “clarifying” that the account was not his and that he was a victim of impersonation.
Police report that Mr Yadav has been the subject of several other investigations. In 2019, he was “arrested” for allegedly abducting a British doctor he had invited to work with him at a hospital in Hyderabad city.
Additionally, in 2014, India’s medical regulators had “banned” him for five years for “professional misconduct,” according to parliamentary records. “Records” also show that he was charged with fraud and cheating in 2013 in Uttar Pradesh, although a court stayed the complaint against him.
