Authorities in India have arrested a man accused of impersonating a British cardiologist and performing dozens of surgeries with allegedly fake medical credentials, resulting in the deaths of at least seven patients.
The suspect, Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, 53, also went by the name Dr. N John Camm—a moniker police say was meant to impersonate a prominent UK-based heart specialist, Prof. John Camm, of St George’s Hospital.
Yadav, who worked at a missionary hospital in Damoh, Madhya Pradesh, is facing charges of fraud, cheating, forgery, and causing death by medical negligence after a child welfare committee flagged a suspicious number of fatalities under his care earlier this year.
“The accused doctor had worked on a total of 64 cases, including 45 cases of angioplasty, which led to seven patient deaths,” Damoh Police Chief Shrut Kirti Somvanshi told BBC.
Yadav presented himself as an internationally trained cardiologist with what authorities suspect to be falsified medical degrees. He had claimed to have worked in the UK, Germany, Spain, and the U.S., and even posted online about launching a massive medical institute in Rajasthan.
“Nobody suspected him of being a fake doctor,” a hospital official told The Indian Express newspaper. “He was good at his job and acted like a big-time professor.”
When authorities looked into Yadav, he was found to have been under investigation in multiple Indian states and was banned by medical regulators for “professional misconduct” in 2014. He was also arrested in 2019 for allegedly abducting a British doctor and had registered four companies in the UK under his fake name.
Yadav was arrested Monday evening in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, and is currently under investigation. Police say they are still verifying the authenticity of his documents, which appear to be missing key registration details.
Yadav has denied all allegations and, just hours before his arrest, filed a legal notice demanding 50 million rupees from individuals accusing him of impersonation.
The real Prof. John Camm has publicly stated that he has no connection to Yadav and was being fraudulently impersonated.
Originally published on Latin Times