Ex-IIMA prof moves HC to quash plagiarism charge

Former faculty with IIMA, Rajnish Das on Monday filed petition before Gujarat High Court to quash criminal charges of plagiarism against his name. After primary hearing in the case, Justice RH Shukla issued notices to state government and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and adjourned further hearing to October 8.

Earlier, a criminal complaint in this regard was lodged against Das under Information Technology Act before Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) in August this year.

Das was held guilty for plagiarism by IIMA’s administration earlier this year, following which a complaint was lodged against him alleging that he sent e-mails to ghost IDs accusing other faculty members of breach of copyright.

According to the petition submitted by Das, the complaint against him under Information Technology Act is not attracting any offence and that police should be ordered to quash it. The e-mails, as alleged in the complaint were not sent by him.

According to details available in the case, IIMA’s director and other faculty members had received emails from IDs under names Anil Sharma and Vaibhavi Suthar alleging involvement of some of the institute’s faculty members of plagiarism. When the institute replied to these emails for more details, their queries were not responded to.

It was at this juncture that the premier B-school filed an application with DCB’s cyber crime cell seeking inquiry in the matter. Investigations revealed that the email IDs were generated from Das’s computers in his on-campus quarters, following which a First Information Report (FIR) was filed against Das in August this year.

Later, certain chapters of two papers authored by Rajnish Das and Sujoy Pall were found to be lifted from other literary sources. The two papers are ‘Pervasive Business Intelligence:
Opportunities and Challenges’ and ‘The Shrinking Lag: A journey from Business Intelligence to Pervasive Commuting and Management, December-2—8, New Delhi’.

After allegations of plagiarism in these papers, IIMA authorities constituted preliminary inquiry committee to look into the matter. The committee submitted a report concluding that allegations against Das are valid.