Bhopal: A team from National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is expected to visit Mission Hospital in MP’s Damoh district on Monday on the trail of the mysterious doctor ‘N John Camm’, who is accused of causing the deaths of seven patients.
The hospital is alleged to have hired the doctor without properly checking his credentials. His true identity and whereabouts continue to be a mystery.
‘Dr Camm’ is alleged to have performed 15 heart surgeries over the course of two and a half months – Dec 2024 to Feb 2025 – is under the scanner for the death of seven of these patients during or shortly after these operations.
An initial inquiry was conducted by Damoh chief medical and health officer Dr Mukesh Jain and district health officer Dr Vikram Chauhan.
“We have submitted a report to the collector. Nothing more can be said,” Dr Jain told TOI on Sunday.
The suspect has gone missing from the Damoh hotel he was staying in for the past month. The Aadhaar card he submitted at the hotel as identity proof has the name ‘Narendra John Camm’ and a Dehradun address. His father’s name on the card is Amarendra Kumar.
The authorities are investigating if ‘N John Camm’ is actually Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, or if both are fake identities.
NHRC member Priyank Kanungo has said that the NHRC team may visit Damoh on Monday to assess the situation, and further action would depend on their findings.
Deaths due to ‘fake doc’: No match in Dr Camm’s education claims & work, say kin
Deepak Tiwari, district president of Child Welfare Committee, said that several families flagged concerns after they noticed discrepancies in the doctor’s qualifications and credentials. Tiwari told TOI that some patients, who were sceptical of the doctor’s expertise, took their relatives to a different hospital in Jabalpur and they survived.
One of the patients to have crossed paths with the mysterious doctor is Rahisa Begum, a local resident. She was admitted to Mission Hospital on Jan 12 for chest pain after a round of treatment at the district hospital. Her son, Nabi, told mediapersons that the private hospital charged Rs 50,000 for her treatment, and an angiography showed 90% blockage in two veins.
A surgery was performed on Jan 15, but Rahisa died a few hours later. When her family asked for the medical file and cause of death, ‘Dr Camm’ allegedly drove away.
Another patient, Mangal Singh from Patera block, was admitted on Feb 4 with symptoms related to gas. His son, Jitendra Singh, said that after an angiography, heart surgery was recommended but Mangal died shortly after the operation.
Jitendra alleged that doctors were unavailable before and after the surgery, and an expensive injection ordered by Dr Camm was never administered. When he demanded a postmortem, the doctors refused and insisted that the surgery had already been completed, telling him to take the body away. They say Dr Camm fled soon thereafter.
The authorities learnt that another patient, Asaram, was brought to Mission Hospital on Jan 31 with what looked like symptoms of a heart attack. His family paid Rs 50,000 for treatment, but they were not shown the angiography report or video. They became suspicious and took him to Jabalpur Medical College, where he was treated without surgery and recovered. Authorities of the mission hospital could not be contacted.
Suspicions are swirling around about Dr Camm’s true identity. In 2023, the name ‘Professor N John Camm’ grabbed attention after a tweet from this handle tagged Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. There were immediate doubts about the account’s veracity, leading to speculation that it may have belonged to Dr Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, who had previously faced arrest in Telangana in a cheating case. ‘Dr. Camm’ responded to these allegations with legal notices against those who trolled him.
Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav aka Dr Camm claims to have completed his MBBS from University of North Bengal in 1996 and MRCP from St. George’s Hospital, London, in 2001, and received training in interventional cardiology under Dr A John Camm.
