MBBS doctor Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, 47, who had two post-graduate degrees, both fake, worked in reputed hospitals in seven states including a hospital run by the son the Madhya Pradesh’s school education minister Rao Uday Pratap Singh in Narsinghpur, investigations have revealed.
The police have confirmed that his two Masters degrees are fake and are now attempting to authenticate his claim of four foreign certificate courses.They have also confirmed that as part of his elaborate fraud, perpetrated over several years, Yadav even invented a wife and children to escape criminal proceedings in a recruitment racket in Hyderabad.
Yadav, who adopted the name of UK based cardiologist Dr N John Camm, was exposed after the death of seven patients at Mission Hospital in Damoh, Madhya Pradesh in January and February . National Human Rights Commission member Priyank Kanoongo said on social media on April 4 that seven people died in Damoh’s Mission Hospital after being treated by a quack, following a complaint by a resident of Damoh, Kishan Patel, and district child welfare committee member, Deepak Tiwari.
Damoh district collector Sudhir Kochar formed a committee of three , based on whose findings the police registered a complaint again Yadav on April 7. “He was held responsible for death of some patients after angiography and angioplasty,” said Shrutkirti Somvanshi, superintendent of police, Damoh.
But by then, Yadav was in the wind.
Mission Hospital manager Pushpa Khare told the police late last week that Yadav stole an ECG machine from the hospital before disappearing in early February. Khare said Yadav had been appointed on January 1.
The FIR has been registered against him under sections 318 (cheating), 338 (forgery of valuable securities, wills, and other important documents), 336 (forgery, specifically creating or altering documents or electronic records with the intent to deceive or cause harm) and 340(2) (using a forged document or electronic record as genuine) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and under the MP Ayurvedic Council Act.
Yadav was arrested from Prayagraj, UP on Monday with the help of a chicken seller.
“When Damoh police team reached Prayagraj to arrest the doctor, his phone number was switched off but a chicken seller, whom Yadav had talked to before switching off his mobile phone, helped the police locate him in a building in a residential township,” said a police officer who didn’t wish to be named.
Yadav was produced before the court and the latter sent him into the police custody of five days which will be completed on Sunday.
Born and brought up in Harjendra Nagar, Kanpur, Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav cleared his All India Medical Entrance Exam in 1991. He completed his MBBS from North Bengal Medical College in Darjeeling , graduating in 1996. For two years, he prepared for his MD entrance exam but failed to clear it.
“We have confirmation of his MBBS degree but we have asked it in writing from the medical college which is yet to be received,” added SP Somvanshi.
According to Yadav’s elaborate resume, in 1999, he claims to have cleared part one of the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom (MRCP(UK)), a recognized postgraduate qualification in general medicine. The same year, he moved to the UK and , claims to have cleared MRCP in general medicine from St George’s medical in 2001. And , he claims to have completed Certificate of Completion of Training, which signifies that a doctor has completed their training in a specific medical specialty and is eligible for specialist registration in the UK in 2004.
Back in India , he joined Escorts Hospital in New Delhi for a few weeks but his resume claims that in September 2004, he moved to Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (RFUMS) in Chicago for a one-year course on complex cardiovascular interventions and, then, completed another two-month course in Harper Medical.
All these qualifications need to be authenticated, according to the police.
“We have sent email to these institutes to know whether he has done any course or not because RFUMS doesn’t offer any such course,” Somvanshi said.
In 2006, he joined Apollo Hospital, Bilaspur for two months before joining Wockhardt, Hyderabad where he worked for three years. In 2009, he joined a hospital in Bhubhneshwar, Odisha. In 2010, he worked at Fortis, Kota for 11 months as senior interventional cardiologist. In 2011, he moved to Klinikum Nuremberg in Germany. He returned to India in 2013.
According to the police, his first brush with trouble was in 2006 after former Chhattisgarh Assembly speaker Rajendra Prasad Shukla, then a sitting MLA from Kota constituency, died on August 20, 2006, at Apollo Hospital in Bilaspur following heart surgery.
His son, Pradeep Shukla, claimed on Monday that Yadav had joined Apollo a few months prior and was introduced as one of Central India’s top cardiologists specialising in laser heart surgery.
“Yadav performed the surgery on my father, after which he remained on a ventilator for 18 days before being declared dead,” Pradeep said. “Later, we came to know that he was not a qualified doctor and had been involved in other suspicious deaths. The Indian Medical Association’s Bilaspur unit had even probed the matter. After multiple complaints, he was reportedly asked to leave the hospital.”
Confirming Yadav’s association with Apollo, hospital PRO Devesh Gopal said, “He worked here nearly 18-19 years ago. It’s an old matter, and we are currently retrieving records to confirm the duration and nature of his service.”
In 2013, he again hit the headlines for his misconduct while working in a hospital in Noida. He was booked under the Information Technology Act for forging documents.
In 2014, Union Health Minister Ashwani Kumar Choubey named Yadav in a list of 50 doctors guilty of professional misconduct after an inquiry and was barred him from a practice for five years.
Police said it was then that he decided to change his name as Dr N John Camm to continue his practise.
“In 2019, he was booked in a criminal case in Hyderabad for duping more than 100 employees on the pretext of providing them jobs in a hospital. He was also later booked for illegal confinement of a UK-based critical expert in Hyderabad. During this course of action by police, he was arrested and a woman purporting to be his wife, named Divya Rawat, came into the picture for the first time. The woman, whose identity is yet to be verified, claimed she was his wife and requested Telangana government to release the doctor,” said an investigator who asked not to be named. Yadav secured regular bail in December 2019.
He initially told police that he changed his name after adopting Christianity but late confessed that he faked his religion identity to become N John Camm to impress people.
But he continued to flaunt that identity.
He became active on Twitter (now known as X) and started posting in favour of BJP leaders including UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, presumably in an effort to curry favour with the establishment. In 2023, he posted that UP CM Yogi Adityanath should be sent to France to control riots in that country. The post went viral and many medical experts in a series of tweets exposed his real identity. He sent fake defamation notices to many people including journalists. Surprisingly, he continued to work with fake identities in different hospitals, said the investigator cited above.
In between, Yadav came to MP in 2022 and joined Laxmi Narayan Memorial Hospital in Narsinghpur, run by son of school education and transport minister Rao Uday Pratap Singh. He worked there for less than two months before abruptly leaving , said Anshul Singh Rajput, manager of the hospital.
Despite repeated attempts, minister’s son and hospital director Dr Rao Aman Pratap Singh couldn’t be contacted for comment.
Somvanshi said it wasn’t surprising that people hired him. Yadav flaunted forged certificates of doctor of medicine (DM) in medicine and cardiology from Kolkata and Puducherry respectively.
(with inputs from Ritesh Mishra and Anupam Pateriya)