‘Fake’ no more, geologist’s findings get expert stamp

After nine agonising years of humiliation and living with the stigma of being a “fake”, a senior geologist of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology...

After nine agonising years of humiliation and living with the stigma of being a “fake”, a senior geologist of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology here has finally been acknowledged for his findings on his claims about Vindhyachal mountains.

The work of Dr Rafat Jamal Azmi, which was rubbished earlier, has now been recognised and validated by internationally renowned geologist Prof Stefan Bengston of the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

It was in the year 1998 that Dr Azmi published a paper creating a sensation by claiming to have discovered Cambrian micro-fossils, which are nearly 550 million years old, in the lower Vindhya ranges. He also claimed that the Vindhyachal mountain ranges were as old as the Himalayas, contrary to the earlier belief of being 1400 to 1100 million years old.

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However, the timing of Azmi’s findings was bad. The geologist community, which had just come out of the Panjab University’s Dr V J Gupta controversy on Himalayan fossils, which was termed as the “biggest fraud of science,” was circumspect.

Although Azmi tried to establish a correlation between lesser Himalayan ranges and lower Vindhyas, his work was doubted and soon accusations were made in the media and scientific community about his work being a “fraud”.

“The linking of my work with the infamous V J Gupta case, marred my reputation, but I continued to work,” Dr Azmi told The Indian Express.

Prof B R Arora, Director of the Institute, said that he was happy with the development but it was too early to react on it conclusively. “The abstract of Prof. Stefan Bengtson has to be published in some journal and then debated upon by the scientific community before reaching any conclusion,” Prof B R Arora said.

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