Farzana Boby describes her life in Bangladesh as a “living hell”. She returned from London two years ago, having spent three years failing to overturn an allegation of cheating by the British government.

Boby is one of thousands of international students forced to abandon their studies and return home who are awaiting the publication of a government watchdog report this week, hopeful that it could mark the start of a resolution to a painful five-year dispute.

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While Boby waits, pressure is mounting on the Home Office to answer questions about its decision in 2014 to accuse about 34,000 international students of cheating in English language tests which were required as part of a visa renewal process.

The National Audit Office (NAO) is expected to release its study into the Home Office handling of the issue on Friday. Early next month, an all-party group of MPs is due to meet for the first time to investigate what happened. Students will visit the House of Commons on Tuesday to highlight the catastrophic consequences of being wrongly accused by the government.

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has told MPs privately that he is sympathetic to the situation of those students who were mistakenly accused and is expected to announce measures to rectify the situation after the NAO report has been published.

More than 1,000 students have been removed from the UK as a result of the accusation and hundreds have spent long stretches in detention, large numbers of whom say they were wrongly accused; more than 300 cases are pending in the court of appeal as hundreds attempt to clear their names.

Boby’s family in Bangladesh has lost £50,000 in tuition fees and UK living expenses. But she has no qualifications to show for her time in London because British officials accused her of cheating in the English test and she was forced to stop attending college before completing her degree.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farzana Boby says her life in Bangladesh is a ‘living hell’ as she waits for the watchdog’s report. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian

The wasted money has triggered a rift between Boby and her parents. Her lack of qualifications has forced her to take low-paid work and the fraud accusation from the British government has further reduced her employability.

She was the first woman in her family to go abroad to study, but a bold decision aimed at improving her prospects has had life-shattering consequences.

Boby, 29, speaks a very clear and precise English, vaguely reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. Her English was already very good before she left home at 19 to study business in London, having completed most of her education in a missionary school run by an American organisation. It is highly unlikely that she would have needed assistance to pass a straightforward English test.

The allegations of mass cheating followed undercover filming by the BBC which showed clear evidence of cheating in two test centres where students sat the test of English for international communication (Toeic).

The Home Office asked the US company providing the test, Educational Testing Services, to re-examine all 58,458 tests that had been taken in the UK between 2011 and 2014. The company concluded that about 34,000 students had definitely cheated, 22,600 had questionable results and only 2,000 had definitely not cheated. Visas were revoked or curtailed from the 34,000 and from most of the 22,600.

Hundreds of students have appealed to their MPs for support. Campaigners question whether it is plausible that about 97% of students who sat tests in Home Office-approved centres could have all cheated.

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Those who followed the Home Office requirement to leave the country immediately after being accused of cheating in the exam have found it hard to pursue their cases from abroad, despite being told they had the right to appeal from outside of the UK. They describe feeling suicidal and unable to progress with their lives because of the accusation.

Boby sat the Toeic exam in 2012 because she needed proof of proficiency in English to apply for a visa renewal. She passed with good grades, submitted her visa application and continued with her studies. Then, at about 7am on a Sunday morning in November 2014, six immigration officers arrived at the door of the house where she was living holding a picture of her and asked her flatmates if she was there.

“I felt like a criminal,” she said. She had had no prior notification that the Home Office had rejected her visa renewal application. She was transformed instantly from a high-fee paying student to an illegal immigrant.

The officers questioned her in detail about the English test. “They asked a lot of questions about the exam: what the building looked like, what the exam was like, if I had gone upstairs to sit the test or downstairs.”

She was held for a few hours in an immigration centre and given a piece of paper stating that she had gained leave to remain in the UK “by deception”.

Initially she was not too concerned. “I thought it should be easy to clear my name,” she said. “This is a developed country, they go by the rules.” But it quickly became clear that thousands of other students had been similarly accused and the process of challenging the accusation was not simple.

Unable to study and prevented from working, she became very depressed, but was determined to stay in the UK to fight the allegation so she could finish the last six months of her degree and graduate. “I was desperate. Having the accusation against me, bothered me a lot. At one point I became suicidal and had to seek help.”

I thought it should be easy to clear my name. This is a developed country, they go by the rules Farzana Boby

However, once she had been categorised as liable for detention by the Home Office, her flatmates told her to leave. She was homeless for months, sleeping on different friends’ sofas, at one stage forced to sleep on a bench in a central London park. She could not afford legal advice and tried to submit a judicial review herself, but, before she made progress, she decided to return home.

“I was broke, mentally, physically, emotionally, financially. I thought I cannot go on or I will kill myself. I felt I was in a black hole and needed to get out of it. I was so afraid they would catch me and put me in a detention centre.” An English friend bought her a ticket back to Dhaka.

“I felt a mixture of anger and failure. I felt so angry that they decided the fate of thousands, based on a video clip. One video clip doesn’t prove that the rest of us were fraudulent,” she said, referring to the 2014 Panorama exposé.

“It has been difficult finding work. No matter how much I know and no matter how good my English is, without a graduate degree I cannot apply for a good job.” She is currently working as a translator.

Her parents are angry at the amount of money they have spent on her education, with nothing to show for it. She hopes that the British government will apologise to the students wrongly accused of cheating. “I would like to be able to show an apology to my parents, so they know I haven’t done anything wrong. Then I would have proof. There is nothing I can show them now. I have lost hope.”

Tejas Soni: ‘My wife thought I was a loser’

Tejas Soni, 36, spent 11 months in detention in the UK, accused of an offence he denies, with no right to an appeal in a British court. Although the time in detention was scarring, the longer-term consequences of the allegation of cheating have been much worse.

He explained in excellent English that he hoped studying in the UK would give him better career options in India. His father encouraged him to go abroad. “His main ambition was to see me do a masters degree, so that my position in life was better than his,” he said. He estimates that he has spent £35,000 on wasted legal and tuition fees.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tejas Soni spent 11 months in detention in the UK. Photograph: Tejas Soni

He spoke very good English before he arrived in the UK, having completed an English language undergraduate degree in commerce. He had to take a Toeic exam for visa-renewal purposes in 2011. He thinks it would have been hard to cheat, because there was a CCTV camera in the exam room filming while between 20 and 25 people were recorded giving answers in English, speaking into computers.

In September 2014, he received a letter classifying him as an immigration offender and telling him his visa had been curtailed. “It is the considered opinion of the Home Office that you have utilised deception to gain leave to remain in the United Kingdom,” the letter read, accusing him of cheating in the English language test. “I must inform you that you have no lawful basis of stay in the United Kingdom and that you should make arrangements to leave without delay.”

He wrote to the then prime minister David Cameron and home secretary Theresa May protesting that he had invested several years in studying in the UK and his visa had been curtailed before he managed to finish. “I asked them: what should I do now? Should I be an illegal person in this country? Should I keep quiet and go back to my country? Should I go to the Thames and throw myself in?”

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He was advised by his family to stay in England to clear his name but, in December 2014, he was arrested by Home Office staff and taken in handcuffs to a detention centre. During the 11 months he was there, he became very depressed and was prescribed anti-depressants by the centre’s medical team. He said staff were sympathetic, but were unable to help or to answer his questions about why he was being held for so long. “I wanted to know: how can you keep someone in detention without a court judgment? Why are you spending taxpayers’ money like this?”

Some time after his release, he felt he had no option but to return to India in the hope of appealing against the mistake from there.

“It is hand to mouth in India. The lack of a degree and the lack of experience means it’s hard to get a job. The visa curtailment ruined my life because I couldn’t complete my degree,” he said.

His marriage has broken down because of the allegation. “She thought I was a loser”.

He has been trying to continue to fight the accusation from Ahmedabad in India, but it has proved almost impossible. “It is very difficult to contact UK Immigration from India. I am waiting for a Home Office decision on the Toeic allegations. I hope they will allow me to complete my studies.”

Naveed Khan: ‘This has destroyed my whole life’

Naveed Khan, 33, attempted suicide, throwing himself out of a window, after being accused by the Home Office of cheating in an English language exam. He survived the attempt, came around to find himself recovering in hospital and was advised to return home to Pakistan by his doctors who believed it would help him recover from severe depression.

But Khan has been rejected by his family, who have such faith in the reputation of the British justice system that they do not believe that the UK government could have wrongly accused students of cheating. Tipped into a breakdown by the abrupt severance of his life in the UK and his family’s subsequent abandonment, he is unable to work. He says he is near-destitute in Pakistan, separated from his family for the past two years, staying in a community centre for homeless people in a town two hours from Islamabad.

The Home Office has maintained for years that individuals who want to challenge the accusation of cheating should first return to their home country and mount a legal challenge from there. Naveed’s experience shows that this is near impossible.

Naveed Khan spent £30,000 on legal fees trying to clear his name. Photograph: Naveed Khan

Three court hearings have been adjourned because the video link between Pakistan and London requested by his lawyers to allow Khan to be cross-examined has not materialised. Another hearing has been set for June and his UK lawyer is now acting for him for free because he recognises his client’s desperate financial situation.

Khan, who comes from a well-off family, studied in an English–medium school before he came to the UK and was already fluent in the language so was relaxed about the English test he was required to take when he was renewing his visa towards the end of his business studies degree in London.

The Toeic test was very straightforward and, from his memory of the four-part exam he sat over two days in 2011, he could not see how anyone could have cheated. “There were two or three invigilators moving up and down the rows. There were about 15 or 20 people. Everyone was sitting by themselves.”

He passed the test but when he was applying for a visa to remain in the UK temporarily as an entrepreneur in 2014, he was accused of having cheated in the exam and told he was liable to detention and removal from the UK. Classified as an illegal immigrant, his bank account was frozen, he was dismissed from his job, made homeless and had his driving licence suspended.

In coming to the UK he had hoped to enhance his job prospects back in Pakistan, but he now regrets the choice. He has spent about £20,000 on tuition fees and another £30,000 on legal fees, trying to clear his name. His family will not allow him back home. “They don’t believe me.” He is taking anti-anxiety medication and continues to find life very difficult.

“It is unbearable. I didn’t do what they are accusing me of.This has destroyed my whole life and my future,” he said, speaking on a borrowed telephone. “I’m not getting better.”

The Home Office said: “The 2014 investigation into the abuse of English language testing revealed systemic cheating which was indicative of significant organised fraud.” Twenty-five people have received criminal convictions for their part in the fraud. A spokesperson said the Home Office had been working with the courts to help people appeal from overseas.

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.