New Delhi : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has conducted raids at 91 locations in several states in connection with its probe against state medical councils and foreign medical graduates who were allowed to practise in India using fake certificates and without qualifying a mandatory test, the agency said on Thursday.

On December 21, CBI had registered a case against 14 state medical councils and 73 foreign medical graduates from countries such as Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, China, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Nigeria on the basis of a complaint from the ministry of health and family welfare.

CBI has alleged that the students were allowed to practise medicine in India without qualifying the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE).

Officials said that when the certificates were produced by these candidates, the medical councils should have verified it from the results sent by the National Medical Commission.

“The registration of such fake certificates enabled the candidates to practise or to secure jobs with hospitals across the country,” CBI spokesperson R C Joshi said in a statement.

Joshi said that while filing a complaint with CBI, the ministry said that “such fraudulent and fake registration by non-qualified persons will be detrimental to the health and well-being of the citizens. It has inter-state ramifications in the health sector. It also involves many states spread across the country.”

The areas that were raided were Delhi, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Bhatinda, Khanna, Karnal, Hamirpur, Shimla, Jammu, Srinagar, Dehradun, Ghaziabad, Guwahati, Tezpur, Imphal, Sikkim, Rajpur, Patna, Munger, Mumbai, Jaipur, Sikar, Vijayawada, Warangal, Tirunelveli, Madurai, Bhopal, Nagpur, Pune, Jalgaon, Bhagalpur, Champaran, Begusarai, Bokaro, Vizag, Hajipur, Vaishali and Nalanda.

During the raids, the agency recovered several incriminating documents, including fake pass certificates of the FMG examination, Joshi said.