A real college's name, fake websites, rented offices and bought data: the "Study Pathway" consultancy that sold management-quota MBBS seats that were never its to sell

The most effective admission frauds do not invent a college. They borrow one. In November 2025 Lucknow police described a consultancy that had borrowed the identity of a real medical institute and sold its seats to families who had done half their homework.

According to Medical Dialogues and Careers360, police arrested two men who ran a consultancy operating as "Study Pathway", accused of using forged identities of the Hind Institute of Medical Sciences to dupe medical aspirants. The gang, police said, worked through fake websites, bank accounts opened in the college's name and rented offices, buying data on NEET-qualified candidates with low ranks and approaching their families with offers of management-quota MBBS seats at colleges in Barabanki and Sitapur. The sums recorded from complainants included Rs 45 lakh from one, Rs 38 lakh from another, Rs 23 lakh and Rs 20 lakh from two more. The420 reported that the arrested men, named as Prem Prakash Vidyarthi, alias Abhinav Sharma, and Santosh Kumar, originally from Bihar, were suspected of running similar schemes across several states for years, with the wider network's takings estimated at over Rs 100 crore. Both are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

What made it work is the part to study. Every element a cautious family checks was present: a college that exists and is recognised, a website, an office, a bank account in the right name, a person who knew the counselling calendar. The single thing missing was the college's own involvement, and the only way to detect that was to walk into the college and ask.

So walk in. A management-quota seat in India is allotted through the state counselling authority or, where the college fills it, through the college's own published process; the fee is paid to the college's account, which the college's office will confirm in person. Any payment to a consultancy for a seat, and any admission letter that did not come from the college's own admissions office, is the Study Pathway model. Data brokers sell your NEET rank to people like this within days of the result; expect the call, and hang up.