Something strange—and embarassing—has happened in India.

For the past few weeks, Novartis has been fighting a lawsuit in India that could affect the availability of cheap drugs worldwide. The lawsuit challenges India’s decision to interpret WTO rules and only honor patents on drugs that are entirely new, not just derivatives or variations of existing drugs.

This clause allows Indian companies to make cheap copies that they then sell all over the world. The case is still being heard, although high-profile voices, including nonprofit group MSF (Doctors Without Borders) and Henry Waxman, chair of the influential US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have asked Novartis to drop the suit. More than 250,000 people have signed the MSF petition.

In the meantime, the Indian government had asked a high-level committee, including R.A. Mashelkar, who retired last year as Director General of India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and is arguably one of the most respected Indian scientists, to look into the patent issue. After nearly two years’ deliberations, the committee produced a report on the law that is favorable to Novartis.

But get this: an Indian newspaper discovered that the crucial bits of the report were plagiarized from a paper published by a think tank in the UK and funded by INTERPAT, an association of pharma companies whose members include Novartis. Mashelkar says he didn’t know about the plagiarism and has withdrawn the report, asking for three months to review it. I buy that he didn’t know about the plagiarism and that it might have crept in when the “draft was being worked on by a sub-group” but the larger issue is the potentially biased source of the original conclusions.

The government hasn’t yet said whether it will accept the revised report, but any way you slice it, this is a deeply embarassing incident for Indian science. Earlier this month, Nature challenged Indian scientists to speak up and help shape policies. This is an inauspicious start indeed.