Police in India have arrested a man accused of posing as a British doctor and performing heart surgeries that allegedly caused the deaths of seven patients. Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, who also went by the name Dr N John Camm, worked as a cardiologist at a missionary hospital in Madhya Pradesh.
Authorities have charged the 53-year-old with fraud, forgery, and cheating, claiming he faked his medical qualifications despite practising as a doctor for nearly 20 years.
Investigators allege he adopted the name of Professor John Camm, a respected cardiologist at St George’s Hospital in the UK, to boost his credibility. Yadav, however, denies all allegations.
Just hours before his arrest on Monday, Yadav issued a legal notice demanding 50 million rupees (£455,000) from several individuals and publishers who accused him of impersonating “another cardiologist.”
The Mission Hospital in Damoh, where Yadav briefly worked, denied knowing about any fraudulent credentials. A hospital representative told The Indian Express newspaper, “No one suspected him of being a fraud. He was skilled and carried himself like a senior professor.”
Concerns first arose in February when a child welfare committee in Damoh reported a series of patient deaths to local officials. “We began questioning his expertise after discovering online that he faced cases in at least three states,” Deepak Tiwari, president of the committee, claimed.
Authorities later found that Yadav had left his position at the hospital earlier that month without explanation and had gone into hiding. He was arrested on Monday evening in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.
District police chief Shrut Kirti Somvanshi told BBC that Yadav performed 64 procedures, including 45 angioplasties, with seven resulting in fatalities. While it remains unclear if his qualifications are legitimate, police suspect they were forged, as the documents reportedly lack unique registration numbers typically assigned to medical graduates.
This is not the first time Yadav’s identity has been questioned. In a 2019 blog post, he claimed to have trained in the UK under Professor A John Camm and to have started working at St George’s Hospital in 2002.
He also stated he had practised in the US, Germany, and Spain before returning to India in 2003. In another post from 2021, he announced plans to develop a 5,000-bed medical institute in Rajasthan, named after “Dr N John Camm.”
Public records, however, reveal that Yadav registered four companies in the UK in 2018 under his own name, later changing it to Dr Narendra John Camm. In 2023, an Indian fact-checker also questioned his credentials after he allegedly created a social media account under the name “Prof N John Camm.”
After his posts gained attention, the real Professor Camm released a statement confirming he was being impersonated.
Yadav has previously faced other investigations. In 2019, he was arrested for allegedly abducting a British doctor he invited to Hyderabad to work with him. Records also show that in 2014,
India’s medical regulators banned him for five years due to “professional misconduct.” Additionally, in 2013, he was charged with fraud and cheating in Uttar Pradesh, though a court later stayed the case.
