A faculty at Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad (IIM-A),accused of plagiarism and academic misdemeanor got some relief from the Gujarat High Court which has asked the premier business school to conduct a fresh enquiry into the matter. The order was passed by a division bench of Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice C L Soni yesterday while hearing a contempt petition filed by Professor Rajanish Dass,who was accused of plagiarism in three academic papers and in a report on UNDP project. Dass,who teaches at IIM-A's Computer And Information Systems Group (CISG) was alleged to have copied the content without giving credit in two papers which were co-authored with research associate Sujoy Pal and published in 2008 and 2009. A two-member committee of professors Errol D'Souza and Tathagata Bandyopadhyay who conducted a preliminary enquiry in the matter concluded in their report submitted last month to IIM-A director Samir Barua that the allegations against professor Dass were 'valid'. When the enquiry was initiated in January Dass had approached the High Court complaining that the committee did not provide him the documents on which it had relied upon.
