During the four months he was held in detention, accused by the government of cheating in a Home Office-approved English test, Raja Noman Hussain witnessed firsthand the scale of the government’s student visa scandal.

He estimates he met more than 100 other international students who had also been arrested and detained after being accused by the Home Office of cheating in the test of English for international communication (Toeic). All denied the accusation, but the vast majority of them were subsequently removed from the UK.

“Every day I met three or four new people who were detained because of Toeic. Some people were doing master’s, some were doing PhDs,” he said. “Every second young person I met was there for the same reason. You asked: ‘Why are you here?’ They said: ‘Because of the English language test.’ I never met anyone who cheated. They were well-educated, with good English.”

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Hussain, 28, is one of about 34,000 students whose visas were revoked or curtailed after the Home Office accused them in 2014 of cheating in one of the government-approved English proficiency tests, which international students are required to take when renewing their visas. He says he was wrongly accused and is part of a growing movement of students coming forward to express fury and despair at the way they have been treated by the UK government, after choosing to come here to study and investing tens of thousands of pounds in tuition fees.

Students are still being detained and forcibly removed; Hussain was held for a second time in February. He argues he had no need to cheat, since he came to the UK with a good level of English, having studied in an English medium school since the age of 11. He has spent five years trying to clear his name, so he can either resume his studies, or return home to Pakistan without an allegation of fraud from the UK government hanging over him.

I’ve never killed a rat in my life and I was being kept in a place with people who have killed Raja Noman Hussain

The National Audit Office (NAO) last week announced an investigation into the government’s actions, expected to report later this month, but the Home Office continues to stand by its decision to cancel or curtail the visas of tens of thousands of students. The immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, said this week that the home secretary, Sajid Javid, would make a statement once he had reviewed the NAO report.

The consequences of the accusation have been life-shattering. Hussain, who has never been in trouble with the police, for a while shared a cell in Brook House immigration removal centre with a murderer. “I’ve never killed a rat in my life and I was being kept in a place with people who have killed.” He has been supported by relatives who have paid more than £23,000 in legal costs. Students he encountered from poorer families were unable to mount legal challenges to the decision and most were removed. He became homeless for a while after his release, forced to sleep in his car, because as someone classified as living here illegally, he lost the right to rent a property.

Most of the students he met in detention told him the Home Office had not provided any evidence explaining why they had been accused. Hussain has repeatedly asked for the evidence on which officials have based their accusation, but has only received via his lawyer a single sheet of paper, on which his country of origin is wrongly noted as Bangladesh. Court judgments have repeatedly criticised the Home Office for the flimsy nature of the evidence presented in Toeic hearings.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hussain found himself in a cell at Brook House immigration removal centre in West Sussex. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

He remains traumatised by the memory of being woken at 5.45am on 30 June 2014, when about 15 immigration and police officers raided his house and swarmed into his bedroom. When he showed them his driving licence, one of the officers spoke into a walkie-talkie on his shoulder, announcing: “Target achieved.” Five immigration enforcement vans were parked in the street outside his home. The Home Office had not informed him he was accused of cheating, or that his student visa was being revoked, so he had no idea why he was being arrested.

“I kept asking: What have I done? Have I done something wrong?” He was told to gather some clothes, handcuffed and taken to detention, where officials showed him a ticket for a flight on which he was booked to return to Pakistan. He was only able to avoid being removed on this and a second flight, booked later in his detention, because he was able to find around £4,500 to pay a solicitor.

When he was released, he was forced to stop studying three months before graduating, wasting three years of work and £16,000 in tuition fees. Relations with his family have become strained, because his relatives find it so hard to understand why he remains accused of cheating almost five years after his first arrest. He was detained again earlier this year, because of a confusion in the Home Office records. He is waiting for a court date for an appeal.

The students’ problems began with the broadcast of a Panorama documentary in 2014, revealing evidence of organised cheating in at least two Toeic test centres, prompting Theresa May, the then home secretary, to take action. The Home Office asked the US-based company Educational Testing Service, which ran the test, to analyse voice recordings to see whether students had cheated. The company told the Home Office about 34,000 had definitely cheated, and another 22,000 had possibly committed fraud; they concluded only 2,000 students who took the test between 2011 and 2014 did not cheat.

More than 1,000 students have been removed from the UK as a result of the accusation, but hundreds of students have protested their innocence; more than 300 cases are pending appeal court decisions.

The Home Office states that “the scale of the abuse is shown by the fact that 25 people who facilitated this fraud have received criminal convictions”. While no one doubts cheating took place in some test centres, MPs have questioned whether it is likely that such a high proportion of people taking a government-approved test could have committed fraud. In an urgent question in parliament on Wednesday, Stephen Timms, the Labour MP who is one of the lead campaigners on this issue, said: “The claim by ETS that almost 97% of those who sat their test had cheated seems to me completely implausible.” ETS has not responded to requests for comment.

It has been eight years since Hussain saw his family; his father has had a stroke. “I’ve missed weddings and funerals. My brother waited to get married for three years, so I could sort out the court case. Then I told him he had to stop waiting. I said: ‘Go ahead, you’ve already wasted so much time waiting for me.’”

His father has asked him not to come back until he has proved his innocence. “My dad has told me: ‘You are not welcome to my home if you come with these allegations.’ He says: ‘The UK has the best justice system. If you haven’t done anything wrong, then go and prove yourself in court, then I can tell my friends and family that my son is innocent.’” So far this has not been possible.

He remains in touch with some of the students he met in detention who have been deported. “Their lives have been hard. Their studies are incomplete, and they have a fraud allegation against their name, so they aren’t able to get a good job. Some have been disowned by their families.

“I came here to complete my studies and planned to go back to my country to get a good job. I have no words for what the Home Office has done to me. Theresa May was home secretary; I think she was responsible for our situation. I was a genuine student. We should have been judged individually, not collectively.”



