The long con: How Narendra Yadav became Dr John Camm

The lid was finally blown off Yadav’s carefully crafted fakery at the Mission Hospital in Damoh, Madhya Pradesh, where his 42-day stint as a senior cardiologist ended on April 7 following an uproar over the deaths of seven patients under his care.

With police now suspecting that his victims number far beyond Damoh’s seven, they have been investigating his stints at hospitals in Jabalpur, Hyderabad, Delhi, and beyond. At Yadav’s apartment in Prayagraj, police uncovered an elaborate “forgery workshop” — high-quality printers that churned out fake degrees, machines that crafted seals with meticulous precision, and a cache of identity cards, including 10 Aadhaar cards bearing the name Narendra John Camm. Police say some of the documents featured a wife and a child, details they now believe are fake.

Court and police records show Yadav switched identities with ease — he was variously Dr John Camm, Dr N John Camm and Dr Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav.

‘The doctor who spoke little’

At Kanpur’s Pardevanpur, a bustling residential and semi-commercial locality dotted with a mix of densely packed houses, shops and clinics, not many admit to knowing “the doctor who spoke little”, who left home in his late teens to study medicine in Darjeeling, and “never really kept in touch”.

His father Gaya Pal Singh Yadav, who retired as a sub-engineer, has been living by himself since his wife’s death many years ago. Relatives and neighbours say that while Yadav, the younger of Gaya Pal’s two sons, moved to Darjeeling for his MBBS in the early 90s, his elder son Surender lives in Kanpur and runs an electric store in Kanpur.

Sitting on a plastic chair at his home in a congested lane of Pardevanpur, Gaya Pal Singh Yadav says, “We lost touch with (Yadav) after he completed his MBBS. We don’t know anything about what he has been up to. We told the police that.”

A kilometre away, at the Harjinder Nagar Inter College, where Yadav studied till his Class 10, Principal Sanjay Tripathi pulls out records of one of their “meritorious students”. Born on September 27, 1971, Yadav, he says, completed his High School in 1986 with a first division.

Two years later, Yadav enrolled at the nearby Christ Church Inter College, where he secured a first division in his Intermediate examinations (Class 12), scoring 73%, says Ashish Massey, the officiating principal.

Yadav’s cousin Praveen Kumar, who too runs an electric shop in Kanpur, says the last time they met was around four years ago, at a family event. “Growing up, we barely spoke to each other though we were on cordial terms. He lived at least 25 minutes away from our home. He was always calm. I heard he was married, but now, they say all of this was a lie.”

According to family accounts and the police investigation so far, after his Class 12, Yadav left home for Darjeeling, where he did his MBBS from North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. Police say this is probably the only authentic degree among the many he has claimed.

Harjinder Nagar Inter College in Kanpur,Narendra Singh Yadav complited his 10th in 1986 fom this college. (Express Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

Damoh Superintendent of Police Shrut Kiriti Somavanshi says, “Some of his batchmates from Darjeeling recognised him from his photos, but they couldn’t recall much. They described him as a bright student who was shy and aloof, but prone to fights. He fought with his family after his MBBS and then took up a part-time job to support himself.”

While the family deny any links with Yadav, police say he briefly set up a private practice in Kanpur, as recently as December 2024, when he enrolled himself on the Practo health app. Here, he is listed as ‘Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav’, a general physician with a degree in MBBS with 12 years of practice.

Investigations show that it was around the time that Yadav graduated from Darjeeling that he may have got to know of the real Dr John Camm. Police are investigating his claim that he visited London in 1999 to pursue an MRCP (Member, Royal College of Physicians) from St. George’s Hospital — Dr John Camm was at the time one of the leading figures in the profession.

According to Dr John Camm’s bio, in 1987, he was a professor of clinical cardiology and prudential chair of cardiology at St George’s Hospital and Medical School, and went on to become an honorary consultant cardiologist at St George’s.

While it’s unclear whether Yadav and Dr John Camm’s paths ever crossed, the hospital administration at St George’s told The Indian Express that Yadav never attended medical school or worked at the hospital. What’s clear is that he was suitably impressed with the man and his credentials, enough to allegedly pretend he was Dr John Camm himself.

Police say that in 1999, Yadav allegedly applied for a change of name to N John Camm at the Kanpur municipal corporation, but didn’t go through with the attempt.

Speaking from London, the real Professor John Camm expressed dismay at the theft of his identity: “The identity theft first cropped up about five years ago — at least to my knowledge. It was very disconcerting… He claimed both to be me and to have been trained by me at St George’s Hospital in London.”

A web of deceit

In his nine-page resume which is now under investigation, Yadav, going by the name Dr N John Camm, claimed membership of the British Cardiac Society in 2001 and an appointment as an interventional cardiologist at St. George’s in 2002. By 2003, he claimed an International Associateship from the American College of Cardiology and a stint at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in New Delhi. In 2004, he boasted a fellowship in Complex Angioplasties at Rosalind Franklin University in North Chicago under Dr Jeffrey B Lakier, with additional training from Dr Marie Claude Maurice and Dr J Richard Spears in advanced procedures such as Laser Angioplasty by 2005. He further asserted a decade-long association as a Senior Interventional Cardiologist at Klinikum Nürnberg Hospital in Germany, alongside visiting consultancy roles at “National Heart Institute in Georgetown” and a teaching hospital in Spain.

The Indian Express wrote to the institutions and the senior professors Yadav mentioned in his CV. Officials at Fortis Escort Institute in Delhi said that while they were still going through their records, they have so far found no evidence  that Yadav worked with them. Klinikum Nürnberg Hospital, one of the largest municipal hospitals in Germany, too wrote back saying they have no record of Dr Narendra Yadav or Dr N John Camm at the hospital. Others are yet to respond to the questionnaire. The Madhya Pradesh Police has reached out to the institutes mentioned in Yadav’s CV.

Yadav also boasted of his abilities to carry out an array of complex procedures — 18,740 coronary angiographies, 14,236 angioplasties (including 736 laser-assisted), 1,357 pacemaker implantations, and more.

Beyond clinical prowess, Yadav painted himself as an academic luminary. He claimed to have served as an editor on the review panel of the British Medical Journal, starting 2002, and as a “review author” for the International Journal of Cardiology from 2005. His bio included early academic accolades — assistantships in Biochemistry and Physiology in 1991, Pathology in 1993, and a Dr Y J Thomas Fellowship for Cardiovascular Sciences in 1999. Yadav also listed participation in over 30 international conferences from 2003 to 2018, transitioning from delegate to faculty status.

Highlights include the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Sessions, EuroPCR in Paris, and the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conferences in San Francisco and Denver — all of these as Dr N John Camm.

He also claimed fellowships at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (2008) and Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands (2010), projecting an image of a globally sought-after expert.

Police say that while his passport records show Yadav did travel to London and Germany and tried his hand at a few foreign degrees, all his academic documents, except for his MBBS degree, were allegedly forged, including an MD degree that he claimed from Puducherry university. Police are also investigating him for allegedly forging his passports — issued in the name of N John Camm — to travel abroad.

Yadav’s lawyer Sachin Nayak says, “The documents are under investigation. We deny all allegations. My client is cooperating with the investigation. The passports were not forged, they were renewed.”

Narendra Singh Yadav’s Father Gayapal Singh Yadav. (Express Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

The unravelling

Yadav’s CV, allegedly dressed up with the most sparkling of credentials, landed him jobs in some of the biggest hospitals in India. Investigations now show that before he joined the Mission Hospital at Damoh on January 1, he worked at the Apollo Hospital in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur in 2006, where former Speaker Rajendra Prasad Shukla was among his patients. According to his family, Shukla, then the sitting MLA from Chhattisgarh’s Kota, died less than a month after Yadav conducted a surgery on him. The hospital is currently investigating the claims. Yadav also worked in private hospitals in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur and Narsinghpur districts.

Investigations now show that between 2013 and 2025, Yadav had at least three FIRs against him under charges ranging from forgery of medical documents to exploitation of hospital staff.

Police suspect he managed to stay under the radar by forging his identity documents and applying for jobs at hospitals through third-party agencies.

Around 2013, Yadav was booked in an IT Act case in Noida after a private hospital that hired him managed to ascertain that his medical qualifications were allegedly forged — the first time his degrees had come into question.
The case led to then Union Health Minister Ashwani Kumar Choubey naming “Dr Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav” in 2014 as part of a Lok Sabha list of 50 doctors guilty of professional misconduct, effectively barring him from practice for five years.

In 2016, the Allahabad High Court warned the investigating officer to complete the investigation in the case within three weeks. Yet, the case went cold.

With his qualifications under the scanner, Yadav allegedly revived his efforts to impersonate Dr Camm. By then, he had been frequenting the UK, where, police say, he left a trail of dissolved companies in his wake.

From healthcare to infrastructure, Yadav’s ventures in the UK — Braunwald Healthcare Ltd, Braunwald Hospitals Pvt Ltd, Braunwald Infra Ltd, and Braunwald Alliance Limited — were all named after a famous Austrian-born American cardiologist Eugene Braunwald. In all of his UK ventures, a constant presence is that of ‘Divya Rawat’, who is now under the Damoh police’s radar.

Yadav’s corporate journey in the UK began with Braunwald Hospitals Pvt Ltd, incorporated on July 15, 2014, at 81 Devonshire Road, Birmingham. The company saw a revolving door of directors, including Divya and Yadav, and rebranding exercises. Amid these shifts, in June 2019, Yadav updated his directorial details to “Narendra John Camm”. The company dissolved on February 11, 2020.

More projects followed — Braunwald Healthcare Ltd in 2018, and Braunwald Infra Ltd and Braunwald Alliance Limited in 2019. All these firms, which stand dissolved, had Divya among the directors along with Yadav, who went by different names — Narendra John Camm and Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav.

Around 2019, Yadav shifted his operations to India after an appointment as chairman of Poulomi Hospital in Hyderabad’s Kushaiguda. His friend and partner in his failed UK ventures, Divya Rawat, joined him as a deputy vice chairman.

Soon after, on January 1, 2019, Yadav took over the hospital’s management and renamed it Poulomi Braunwald Hospital. In April that year, Yadav was accused of defrauding over 100 employees at the hospital.

A senior Telangana police officer who was part of the probe says, “When employees confronted Yadav about unpaid wages for February, March and April 2019, he allegedly employed bouncers to threaten them and barred them from entering the hospital.”

Yadav was also accused of wrongfully confining Dr Kenneth Townend, a 61-year-old UK-based critical care medical professional, who had been invited by the senior management of the hospital to help with the hospital administration. “Soon after he came in, Dr Townend flagged the alleged financial mismanagement at the hospital. On April 24, 2019, Yadav allegedly lured Dr Townend away from the hospital to a villa, where he was locked in a room by Yadav’s driver,” the officer says.

Days later, on April 28, 2019, Yadav and Divya reportedly fled, prompting an FIR under Section 343 (wrongful confinement) of the IPC.

A senior hospital official who is now retired says, “Nobody knew they were frauds. They came with glowing CVs and tried to handle the affairs of the hospital and ran its finances to the ground. He even locked up a UK-based doctor.”
On May 16, 2019, Yadav was arrested from Chennai and remanded in judicial custody. He came out on bail and went missing soon after. The Telangana Police have since then been on the lookout for Yadav and Divya.

“We filed a chargesheet in the two cases and have been waiting for the trial to begin. Yadav has been missing since 2020. Non-bailable arrest warrants were issued against him. Divya was never arrested and fled to the UK,” says the officer.

Years later, in 2023, Yadav made an appearance as ‘Dr John Camm’ — this time in a tweet. That July, as riots broke out in France over the killing of a 17-year-old, he tweeted from the Twitter handle @njohncamm, lending his voice to the contentious political issue and urging that UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath be sent to France to control the situation. The post gained traction after the CM’s account retweeted it.

The real John Camm recalls that several Indian cardiologists raised doubts over the veracity of the Twitter account. “Indian physicians and cardiologists rumbled that this man has nothing to do with me and attempted to shut him down,” he says.

Yadav, at the time, had sent out legal notices to media houses claiming that the allegations of impersonation were false. He would send the same legal notice once more in 2025, when the MP Police alleged that Yadav was impersonating Dr Camm in Damoh.

SP Somavanshi says, “The legal notices were not sent by a genuine lawyer. They were forged. That lawyer never represented him. He made the legal notice himself.”

Christ Church Inter College in Kanpur. Narendra Singh Yadav completed his 12th in 1988 from this college. (Express Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

The doctor in Damoh

In the end, if Yadav’s luck ran out, it was due to circumstances that had been brewing at Damoh’s Mission Hospital much before he joined. In 2024, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) accused Ajay Lall, the owner of Mission Hospital, of child trafficking and religious conversion. In October last year, the Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed an FIR against Lall and pulled up former NCPCR chief Priyank Kanoongo.

Local CWC member Deepak Tiwari, however, stayed on the case. That’s when Tiwari got wind of allegations of deaths at the hospital — seven of them, all under ‘Dr Camm’s’ watch, between January 1 and February 12 — and tipped off the authorities. Soon, the district Chief Health Medical Officer conducted his own investigation and found that Yadav’s documents did not bear the registration number of the Medical Council of India.

It was on January 1 that Mission Hospital hired Yadav through a Bhopal-based agency for a staggering Rs 8 lakh a month. Here, he played the archetypal professor and celebrity doctor, dressing in smart suits and surrounded by private security guards.

He stayed at the Utsav Villas hotel, with access to his room strictly barred.

Doctors and staff members at Mission Hospital say Yadav arrived on time and worked his entire shift. Says a hospital attendant, “He carried himself like a doctor. He was very authoritative… would scold the staff often. But that is expected of such a big doctor, so we didn’t think anything was amiss. We just followed his instructions. Then one day, he disappeared.”

With the case now blowing up, and questions being raised about how Yadav could be hired without background checks, Pushpa Khare, the Mission Hospital in charge, says, “Dr John was a legit doctor. He cared for his patients and did his job well. No one can question the work he did.”

On February 12, Yadav’s last day at the Mission Hospital, he turned up for work with a security guard and allegedly left with a portable echo machine worth around Rs 7 lakh, following which the hospital administration filed a police complaint against him.

The hospital CCTV captures him walking in wearing a crisp black suit and cream pants, holding his tie in place. He walks towards a hospital attendant dressed in scrubs. Moments later, he leaves while a security guard, dressed in a black jacket and a cap, follows, carrying an echo portable machine.

Just like it had happened so many times in the past, Dr John Camm had walked out, and in walked Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav.

(With inputs from Manish Sahu)