📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
Fake websites, fake Instagram, fake bank accounts in the college's name: how two men in Lucknow "sold" Hind Institute seats for over ₹1 crore
The most convincing scams do not invent a college — they borrow a real one. In November 2025, Lucknow police arrested two men, reported as Abhinav Sharma (35) and Santosh Kumar (34), for running a consultancy that presented itself as Hind Institute of Medical Sciences and collected more than ₹1 crore from parents for management-quota MBBS and engineering seats.
According to Careers360, the operation had every layer a parent would check. Counterfeit websites and Instagram pages carried the institute's name. Multiple bank accounts were opened in names resembling the institute, so payments appeared to go "to the college". A call centre contacted parents of NEET-qualified students directly, presenting the callers as institute representatives. Seals and cheque books completed the picture. Money was collected by demand draft, online transfer and cash.
The victims listed in the report paid ₹45 lakh, ₹38 lakh, ₹23 lakh, ₹20 lakh, ₹18 lakh and ₹45 lakh respectively. Complaints began on 1 November after families realised no seat existed; the accused were arrested near Kathauta Lake on 24 November. Police reported recovering ₹4.9 lakh in cash, three phones, six CPUs and six monitors from rented offices, and said investigations were continuing in several districts. The accused are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
What made this work is that the family's due diligence — "is the college real?", "does the bank account carry the college's name?" — was answered with props. Impersonation defeats the checks people usually make.
The checks it does not defeat: a management-quota seat in India is allotted only through the state counselling process, never by a caller; the college's real website is the one linked from official regulators, not the one that appears first in a search or in an ad; and a bank account "in the college's name" must be confirmed by calling a number on the regulator-listed website, not the number the caller gave you. Hyderabad's police commissioner put it plainly in a May 2026 advisory: all medical admissions run through centralised counselling regulated by the NMC, and any "direct" route is illegal by definition.
Were you affected by this case, or something like it? Report it with your own evidence, or tell your story — first-person accounts are what stop the next family.
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.