In a major action, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday said that it has conducted searches at around 91 locations in connection with its investigation against several state medical councils and foreign medical graduates who were allowed to practice in India without qualifying for a mandatory test.
CBI spokesperson RC Joshi said that the agency carried out searches at 91 locations in Delhi, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Bhatinda, Khanna, Karnal, Sawaimadhopur, Narvana, Hamirpur, Shimla, Jammu, Srinagar, Dehradun, Ghaziabad, Guwahati, Tejpur, Imphal, Sikkim, Rajpur, Patna, Munger, Mumbai, Jaipur, Sikar, Vijayawada, Warangal, Tirunelveli, Madurai, Bhopal, Nagpur, Buldana, Pune, Jalgaon, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, Champaran, Begusarai, Bokaro, Vizag, Hajipur, Vaishali, Nalanda etc at the premises of certain Medical Councils as well as Foreign Medical Graduates(FMGs) which led to the recovery of several incriminating documents, including fake Pass Certificates of the FMG Examination.
The agency registered an FIR on December 21 of this year against 14 state medical councils and 73 foreign medical graduates who were allowed to practise medicine in India without qualifying for the mandatory Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE).
According to the rules, a foreign medical graduate must qualify for the FMGE or screening test, conducted by the National Board of Examination in order to get provisional or permanent registration with the National Medical Commission or a state medical council to practise medicine in India.
“However, in the FIR, it was alleged that 73 FMGs, who failed to qualify for the mandatory qualifying examination managed to get themselves registered with medical councils in several states,” the official said.
It was further alleged that registration on such fake certificates enabled the candidates to practice or to secure jobs with hospitals across the country, the FIR stated.