Delhi HC seeks salary details of JNU professor

New Delhi: The Delhi high court has asked for the salary details and attendance records of a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) assistant professor whose appointment is under challenge for allegedly committing “plagiarism”.

A bench of acting chief justice Gita Mittal and justice C. Hari Shankar has directed the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to produce the assistant professor’s records, if any, for the period 2012 to 2014 when he was allegedly pursuing a Masters degree in Turkish language and literature from Turkey.

“The JNU shall file an additional affidavit placing before us the record relating to payment of salary, and the attendance record of Gous Mashkoor Khan for the period 2012-14,” it said. The court has now listed the matter for further hearing on February 28 next year. The court’s direction came on a plea by a law graduate and a RTI activist,

Mobashshir Sarwar and M Arshad Parvez, who have alleged that Khan, an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Turkish School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies in JNU, was not “eligible” for the post. Parvez, who did his BA (Honours) in Turkish language and literature from JMI in the year 2015, alleged the assistant professor “plagiarised” an online literature work in Turkish language and published the same in 2012 with a new title — ‘A new approach to Turkish language learning’. The petitioners have sought a direction to “form a fact-finding panel to fix responsibilities of intellectual plagiarism panel by the assistant professor”.