On July 25, 2014, he says Abbott asked him to resign and accused him of a conflict of interest involving his wife. She had obtained a license the previous year to operate a wholesale drug business in case he left Abbott, where he felt increasingly insecure. Mr. Khanna said that opening a drug company would have violated Abbott’s rules but that his wife had not started a company.

He says he refused to resign. Abbott fired him.

Asked about Mr. Khanna’s allegations, Mr. Kadkol cited the company’s policy of not discussing individual cases or investigations into internal complaints.

Mr. Awasthi’s Final Days

Sitting on the floor of her tiny living room just days after her husband’s suicide, Ms. Awasthi recounted the final few weeks of her husband’s life.

“He told me, ‘The company is pressuring me,’” she said, wearing a pink sari, her two young children playing among the mourners. “I said, ‘Change jobs.’ He said, ‘How will I get another job?’”

Work pressure built quickly in June after the new boss, Inder Kumar, took over managing Mr. Awasthi’s sales team. His previous manager, Mr. Tiwari, had been asked to transfer to a city in southern India, more than 1,000 miles away from Indore. He declined the transfer and lost his job.

According to two former employees of the new manager, he could be a tough boss. One of them, Mayank Pandey, said he felt so desperate to meet sales targets that he bribed doctors with his own cash to get them to prescribe Abbott drugs. Mr. Pandey quit Abbott this year, describing himself as “mentally broken.”