Thirty doctors found guilty of accepting a foreign trip worth Rs 2 crore to Paris and Monaco, funded by pharmaceutical company AbbVie, hail from at least nine states, according to an RTI response. The National Medical Commission (NMC) has reminded state medical councils (SMCs) to submit action taken reports, but six out of nine councils have not complied since the names were sent last year.
RTI Reveals Details of Pharma-Funded Trip
The Department of Pharmaceuticals forwarded only 27 of the 30 names to the NMC, with no explanation for dropping three. Of these 27, 11 were from Maharashtra, three each from Gujarat and Telangana, two each from Punjab, Karnataka, West Bengal and Delhi, and one each from Assam and Kerala. The SMCs were sent the names on December 15, 2025, to conduct an enquiry and award appropriate punishment.
NMC Reminder to State Councils
On May 26, the Ethics and Medical Registration Board of NMC sent a reminder to the state councils of Assam, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana and West Bengal, noting that the action taken report was still awaited and requesting them to complete the process expeditiously in a time-bound manner.
Dr. Babu KV, the RTI applicant and an ophthalmologist, pointed out that although the company bribing the doctors was identified as AbbVie, the Department of Pharmaceuticals and NMC refused to reveal the names of the doctors found guilty by two committees constituted by the department.
Legal Provisions and Timeline
According to the Medical Council of India Act, if a complaint has not been decided by an SMC within six months, the NMC has the option to refer it to its own ethics committee. By June 15, it will be six months since the SMCs received the complaint and nine months since the NMC got the names from the pharmaceutical department in September 2025.
In May 2024, the Department of Pharmaceuticals received a complaint, following which it formed a special committee to audit AbbVie. The committee concluded that AbbVie had violated the Uniform Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices by funding the lavish trip for the doctors.
