📰 From the news · Fake admission / seat promise
A "renowned" medical school that was one year old: Washington University of Barbados, 200 students and ₹25 crore
Washington University of Barbados received a charter from the Barbados Ministry of Education in 2016, admitted its first students in April 2017, and was closed by October 2018. Its website described it as "a renowned healthcare institution that has offered medical degrees for over a decade". It was accredited by no one — not the Caribbean accreditation authority CAAM-HP, not the US Department of Education's NCFMEA, not any regional body.
According to the sources collected on the institution's Wikipedia page (The Hindu, Barbados Today, The Barbados Advocate and others), the students came mainly from India, recruited through education consultancies. Police in India later said a Bangalore consultancy owned by the school's CEO, Gopi Venkata Rao, had targeted students sitting the Common Entrance Test with promises of seats in the United States, Canada, Guyana and China. Students were charged between ₹30 and ₹40 lakh each; the total fraud was put at more than 200 students and about ₹25 crore.
The reality on the ground was reported early. By August 2017, Barbados Today wrote that 15 of the 80 foreign students wanted to leave, citing inadequate classroom furniture, no air-conditioning, poor food, no study materials and no real campus. In October 2018 around 200 students met government officials to say they had been without food, electricity or water because the school had not paid its utility bills for five months.
The CEO was arrested on 5 October 2018 after an international manhunt and charged with evading liability over dishonoured cheques; he was reported to owe nearly BDS $3 million for hotel facilities used as the "campus". The director, Deoraj Dalchand, was remanded shortly after. In November 2018 both were granted bail on surrendering their passports to face fraud-related charges. The outcome of those proceedings is not recorded in the sources here, and both men are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
What this case teaches is that a charter is not accreditation. A government can permit a company to operate a school without any body having checked that its degree leads to a licence anywhere. The two questions that would have ended this in an afternoon: "Which accreditation body lists you?" and "Which country's medical regulator accepts your graduates?" The World Directory of Medical Schools shows accreditation status for every listed school; a school that is not in it, or is listed without recognised accreditation, cannot be the basis for a ₹30-lakh decision.
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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.