New Delhi, March 12 -- The American Dara Academy in Senegal marketed itself to families in the United States as an affordable boarding school where their children could study the Quran alongside an American curriculum. Parents and families - many with West African roots - sent their children to the school believing it would be a rigorous and affordable religious education.

But the school is being investigated for alleged physical abuses, with hundreds of students withdrawing from the academy and one of two campuses - where most of the alleged abuses took place - now closed, according to an official close to the case.

In accounts shared with The Associated Press, students alleged that supervisors beat disobedient pupils repeatedly in a s...