The National Human Rights Commission has initiated a probe into the deaths of seven people after they were allegedly treated by a fake cardiologist at a missionary hospital in Damoh district of Madhya Pradesh, officials said on Sunday.
A team of the National Human Rights Commission will camp in Damoh from April 7-9 to conduct an investigation into the matter, NHRC member Priyank Kanoongo said.
While the district chief medical health officer Dr Mukesh Jain did not share the total number of victims, he said that a probe report into the matter has been sent to district collector Sudhir Kochar. The probe was conducted by a team of officials from the district health department.
According to a complaint lodged by a local resident with the NHRC, a person using the name Dr N John Camm, who was working at the Mission Hospital in Damoh, said he was trained in London.
The complainant said the real name of the person is Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav. He misused the name of a famous cardiologist from the United Kingdom, Professor John Camm, to mislead the patients and they died due to his wrong treatment, the complaint alleged.
The Mission Hospital authorities could not be contacted on the issue.
{{/usCountry}}The Mission Hospital authorities could not be contacted on the issue.
{{/usCountry}}Kanoongo said a case of the deaths of seven people has come to light where a fake doctor was operating on patients in the name of the treatment of heart disease.
According to the complaint, the said missionary hospital is covered under the Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Yojana and hence government money has also been misused. The National Human Rights Commission has ordered an investigation, he said.
“The investigation team of the National Human Rights Commission constituted on my orders to investigate the case will camp in Damoh from 7th April to 9th April and investigate. If any victim or any other person wants to provide information related to the case, they can meet the investigation team in Damoh,” Kanoongo said in a post on Sunday.
The investigation team will examine the institution and persons mentioned in the complaint, including administrative officials, he added.
Yadav reportedly joined the hospital in January and performed at least a dozen surgeries before leaving the district in February, an official familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
“We found that he had been active since 2019 as the real doctor N John Camm posted on social media about this fraudster. There was an FIR against him in Telangana as well. All these things are being verified before registering the FIR,” the officer said.
Another Damoh resident, Krishna Patel, said that his grandfather Asharam Patel was admitted to the hospital on January 31 when doctors informed him that the latter had suffered a heart attack and demanded ₹50,000 as deposit. “But the doctors refused to share medical reports and said there was need of immediate surgery. We then took him to Jabalpur,” Patel said.
Nabi Khan, a third person, whose relative to fell victim to the fraud, said that following the death of his mother the hospital did not share her reports with the family but due to the trauma of her demise they didn’t raise objections at the time.
“After death of my mother during surgery, they refused to share any medical reports... I was in trauma so didn’t doubt that such a big hospital could appoint a fake doctor. My mother was killed by the fake doctor and now I want murder FIR against the doctor and hospital administration,” Khan said.
All patients complained to the NHRC over the matter. No first information report (FIR) has been filed in the matter.
The manager of Mission Hospital, Pushpa Khare, said that an internal investigation has been launched. “We are doing internal investigation and would able to share anything after report only,” Khare said.
Kochar, meanwhile, that the matter is “under investigation as to how the fake doctor was appointed by the hospital and how did they allow a large number of surgeries in a month.”
The hospital, however, is not new to controversy.
The hospital’s owner Dr Ajai Lall was earlier accused in a case of illegal conversion and child trafficking filed by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) in November 2022. He was later acquitted in the case in September 2024.