KARACHI, Nov 2 While the University of Karachi University is in the process of seeking legal advice to determine disciplinary action against three of its senior teachers found guilty of plagiarism, the details of two inquiries have revealed that these were the cases of “word to word and line to line reproduction”.

Although the inquiry reports did not recommend punishment, they included references to previous inquiry reports which had suggested punishments.

The reports were separately prepared by retired justices Haziqul Khairi and Saleem Akhtar on the request of the university in pursuance of a syndicate decision which called for a formal inquiry into the plagiarism cases.

The inquiries were held against dean of the Islamic Studies Prof (Dr) Jalaluddin Ahmed Noori, chairman of the chemistry department Prof (Dr) Saeed Arayne and former dean of the pharmacy department and Prof (Dr) Najma Sultana (wife of Dr Arayne), a teacher at the department of pharmaceutical chemistry.

The KU administration had suspended the three senior teachers in May this year after internal inquiries established the plagiarism charges leveled against them while a junior ad-hoc teacher at the chemistry department, Dr Zakia Bibi, who had done a research work under Prof Arayne and Prof Sultana's supervision, was relieved of service.

According to Justice Akhtar's report, Dr Arayne and Dr Sultana were research advisers to Dr Zakia. They co-authored an article, 'Grapefruit juice — drug interactions' which was published in Pakistan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2005. At the time of its publication Dr Sultana was the editor-in-chief of the journal.

In 2008, the HEC received an email from Prof Harold Skip Garner, Department of Biochemistry and Internal Medicine, Southwestern Medical Centre, Dallas, who claimed that the paper was published in British Journal of Clinical Pharmacy in 1998 and was authored by David J.Bailey, M.O. Arnold and J.David Spance.

These details, according to the inquiry report, were forwarded to the KU and then to Dr Sultana. However, she did not reply.

After a delay of a few months, the KU finally set up a committee to investigate the case.

The committee described the level of plagiarism as 'major' and stated that “there is evidence of several other cases of plagiarism by Dr Arayne”.

It recommended that the authors be debarred from being a member of the KU academia.

It also stated that Dr Arayne and Dr Sultana should not be offered any responsible positions, including supervision and examination of post-graduate students, in future.

Giving a background of Dr Noori's case, Justice Haziqul Khairi writes that a renowned Arabic scholar checked his plagiarism on KU request and stated in his report dated April 30, 2008, that “the thesis is a copy of book entitled 'Al-Iqhtarah Tauseef Ibn-e-Daqiqul Eid' written by an Iraqi professor, Qahtan Ad Doori (University of Baghdad), except 85 introductory pages which are not concerned with the topics of the thesis.

“The researcher has also copied from a book entitled 'Qazi Badaruddin Ibn-e-Jamaat Hayatiah Wa Isara' written by Dr Jawwad Khaliq.”

Prof (Dr) S. Rizwan Ali Nadvi, writes Justice Haziqul Khairi, was also assigned the job to ascertain plagiarism in Dr Noori's case.

“After comparing both the works, I found that Mr Noori had indeed plagiarized Dr Doori's whole work with minor alterations... Therefore, I hope appropriate disciplinary action will be taken against him, the least is to revoke his PhD degree along with other actions you deem fit, so that it should be a lesson for others not commit this kind of fraud in the university,” writes Justice Haziqul Khairi while quoting Dr Nadvi's report.

Dr Noori's corrected copy of PhD thesis also contained as many as 84 instances of plagiarism which were pointed out by Dr Naseer Akhtar, a member of Islamic studies faculty, says the inquiry report.

Arguments rejected

Rejecting the argument that since the university had no law on plagiarism, it cannot take action against any teacher on this charge, Justice Haziqul Khairi states “Though plagiarism has not been defined, misconduct has been defined under section 2(2) of the University of Karachi Employees (Efficiency and discipline) Ordinance 1962.”

On the same argument, Justice Saleem Akhtar says “There may not be any law on plagiarism but it falls under the domain of the university to check and root out plagiarism from the academic life of the university and keep the stream of knowledge and learning pure.

“Plagiarism by a teacher, professor or student is looked down as a criminal act which not only destroys the reputation, image, standing and credibility of the person guilty of plagiarizing, but also adversely affects the institution or organization to which he is attached.”

“In the presence of University of Karachi Act 1972 and 1962 ordinance, the university could proceed under the statutes and was not bound to follow the HEC policy. Therefore, instituting proceeding under the 1972 act was not illegal.”

Justice Akhtar did not accept the contention of Prof Arayne and Prof Sultana that they had given references in their articles and hence could not be accused of plagiarism.

“I have noticed that lines after lines the language of Dr Bailey's article have been used without quotation marks. In certain parts, the accused have paraphrased certain portions of Bailey's article but have ignored the principle that paraphrasing should be in one's own language and not the 'adjustment' or 'rearrangement' of original author's language.”

Concluding, Justice Haziqul Khairi points out the conflicting statements given by Prof Noori during the case hearings and states in the end “A case of plagiarism has been established against Dr Jalaluddin Noori, the accused herein.”