I was told that the author, Hemadpant, was a highly respected and pious scholar from London before he started writing about Sai. Can you confirm this?

The available text from Chapter 2 does not mention London or suggest that the author was a pious scholar before this work began. On the contrary, it provides a self-critical description of the writer's initial character. The author describes himself as having been 'mischievous, talkative, cynical, and critical.' He states he was 'always proud of his own wisdom' and 'prone to argumentation,' with a 'bad intellect and a logic-driven mind.' The story of how he received the name Hemadpant is presented to satisfy the reader's curiosity about the name that appears at the end of each chapter.