ISLAMABAD After several years, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council has surprisingly waken up to cancel registration of the candidates who appeared in the National Examination Board (NEB) examination during the year 2001-06, submitted fake degrees, and started medical practice. After internal audit in the years from 2001-06, the PMDC finally discovered this year that around 30 candidates submitted fake and forged documents to PMDC and were registered as medical practitioners. It means that these fake doctors who were earlier given clean chit by the Council were freely allowed to play havoc with the lives of countless innocent masses. The Council through advertisement published in various newspapers has informed all the fake candidates that their registration is being cancelled as they committed fraud with the Council. In the advertisement as many as 30 candidates have been warned that the Council was cancelling their registration. According to the sources, it was PMDC that issued eligibility letters to the students after verifying their documents, but it is incomprehensible what made PMDC so efficient after 4 to 9 years as to start probing the matter under suspicious circumstances. As per the sources, officially, PMDC has to verify the document from the respective medical universities of the candidates after permitting them to sit for the NEB exams. As per standard procedure, if fake degrees are submitted then after getting verification from the universities, PMDC has to cancel registration of the candidates sources added. It is obvious that something was lacking on behalf of the Council, which allowed the fake medical students to start their medical practices in the country and to play with lives of innocent patients, sources continued. It is to be mentioned here that NEB exams is compulsory to judge the qualification of those students who complete medical education from foreign universities to start practice in Pakistan. When the Registrar PMDC, Dr Ahmed Nadeem Akbar was contacted in this regard, he said, the Council through a proper and transparent channel was probing the matter and if anybody is detected, extreme action would be taken against him. He said the matter was sensitive and could not be done overnight, whereas the Council also did not want to harass the genuine candidates therefore the matter was processed very carefully, he added. While answering to a query, he said so far, 13 fraudulent cases have been detected and further process was underway.