New Delhi: A “shocked” Dr John Camm said that he had considered the possibility of reporting his identity being used by someone else in India years ago but decided against it thinking that would not be “worthwhile”.
Speaking to ThePrint over phone from London, the British cardiologist said that he first learnt about the man—Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav—assuming his identity about five years back when some of his cardiologist friends in India flagged an account saying it posted on political issues in the country.
Yadav has been arrested by the Madhya Pradesh Police following charges that he faked Dr Camm’s identity and performed cardiac procedures such as angiography and angioplasty on several patients at a Mission Hospital in Damoh, seven of whom allegedly resulted in deaths of patients.
The investigation so far has shown that Yadav may have an MBBS degree from a medical college in West Bengal but no further specialisation and that he started using Camm’s name after the erstwhile Medical Council of India barred him from practicing medicine for five years in 2014 following charges of professional misconduct.
“It was felt not to be worthwhile because there was no way in which the authorities here, the university, or the Royal College of Physicians (Yadav had claimed association with this organisation) and the other things that he has claimed, other elements of my identity that he’s stolen, could be in any way helpful in preventing him from doing so,” Dr Camm said.
“So, we decided to try and warn him off… We did a lot of that.. but we didn’t do anything through official channels,” the cardiologist added.
As investigation continues into the Damoh deaths, police have said that Yadav told interrogators that he briefly worked in Germany’s Klinikum Nuremberg hospital in 2011. The police seized a high school marksheet issued in the name of ‘N John Camm’.
“I simply was made aware that this guy was calling himself John Camn… And this first came about some years ago, perhaps five years ago..I just learned this from colleagues who spotted this on social media because he uses social media a lot..because of this, we had a campaign to try and prevent him from using social media and to try and correct information that he was giving over the social media,” Dr Camm said.
“It was partially successful, but I don’t know what re-fired him and he started doing it again a little while ago, perhaps two or three years ago,” the clinical cardiologist with St George University Hospitals said.
Several Indian cardiologists, he said, spotted what the impostor was doing and decided to investigate him.
“I think that may have been the start of the investigation which has eventually led to his arrest for clinical disasters that he has caused. He often states that he is me, sometimes that he has been trained by me or that he was trained in St. George’s Hospital,” Dr Kamm pointed out.
The UK-based cardiologist, who has been to India multiple times, insisted that he is not an interventional cardiologist and has never met Yadav.
“I do not do anything of the sort that he does… I know nothing about him…I’ve never met him. And to my knowledge, I have not seen him. Although he could have been in an audience listening to me or something of that sort, I have no recollection of him at all,” he told ThePrint.
The cardiologist said while he knew about Yadav using his name on social media accounts, he did not know of him using his identity for doing procedures on patients which would harm them.
“…from my perspective, I’m concerned that he will stop pretending to be me, stealing my identity, impersonating me and so on..I hope that this concludes that and that we don’t have any further problems of that nature.. But I think that whatever is happening to him in India is the business of the healthcare system there and the courts there, and I’m really not involved at all in it,” Dr Camm said.
Yadav is currently under five-day custody of the police, who are interrogating him for further leads to unravel his web of deceit. In a parallel investigation, a panel of medical experts from the Jabalpur Medical College is also looking into Yadav’s role in the seven deaths at Damoh’s Mission Hospital.
According to the police, further charges would be added to an FIR against Yadav based on the findings of the expert panel. On Sunday night, the Damoh chief medical and health officer had filed the police complaint against Yadav.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: Damoh deaths row: MP’s ‘fake UK doctor’ was banned by MCI for misconduct in 2014