📰 From the news · Fake admission / seat promise
A 408-page Aspire2plab folder left at a GMC assessment centre, 111 scenarios matched to the PLAB 2 bank: tutor erased, High Court appeal dismissed
Every year thousands of international medical graduates, many from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt, sit the General Medical Council's PLAB 2, a clinical examination of 18 stations drawn from a confidential bank of about 300 scenarios. A private industry of crammer courses has grown up around it, and one High Court judgment sets out what happens when a course sells the content of the exam itself.
In Vardhineni v General Medical Council, [2024] EWHC 3328 (Admin), decided by Fordham J on 20 December 2024, the court dismissed an appeal by Dr Nikhilesh Rao Vardhineni against his erasure from the medical register. The judgment records that around 1 October 2019 a 408-page folder branded Aspire2plab was found at a GMC clinical assessment centre, left by a candidate days after sitting PLAB 2. A GMC assessment officer matched 111 of the folder's scenarios to the question bank, and 83 were described as extremely consistent. The copyright footer carried Dr Vardhineni's name alongside that of another tutor.
On 9 December 2022, after a 33-day hearing, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal found that he, or someone acting on his instructions, had obtained confidential PLAB 2 information, created and distributed teaching materials containing it and falsely presented them as the original work of Aspire2Plab Ltd. It found he had acted dishonestly and directed erasure. He described himself as an unpaid weekend tutor; the tribunal found he was an integral part of the company, and the judgment notes that he and his wife were registered at the addresses Aspire used at Companies House. He was ordered to pay the GMC's costs of £12,961.50. AusDoc reported on 23 January 2023 that he was struck off for procuring and sharing confidential exam questions while tutoring, and that he had sat the exam three times himself.
The case may not be isolated. Essex Live reported on 1 October 2026 that a tribunal hearing which ended on 30 September had erased two doctors connected with a PLAB academy in Romford, after a folder of exam material was reportedly found at the GMC's Clinical Assessment Centre in 2019; TrustMBBS could not access that report to verify its details. The mechanism in the Vardhineni case was simple: candidates' recollections of real stations were compiled into course packs, presented as original teaching and sold to the next cohort, and the GMC acted only once a folder surfaced at its own centre.
For a student, a course promising you will know the stations in advance, or a tutor circulating recalled scenarios, is a risk to your registration rather than a shortcut. Check any tutor's name on the GMC's online register, prepare from the GMC's own PLAB 2 guidance, and refuse recalled questions: the tribunal treated station content as confidential, and a candidate caught with it has as much to lose as the seller.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.