THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two days after she hit the headlines by getting her marriage re-registered under the Special Marriage Act to overcome the ‘discrimination’ against women in the matter of inheritance in Sharia law, Sheena Shukkur finds herself in the midst of a controversy over plagiarism in her PhD thesis.
Sheena is the Kannur University Law Department head and former MG University pro-vice-chancellor.
The Save University Campaign Committee (SUCC), a whistleblower’s group, has approached Governor Arif Mohammed Khan with a petition that Sheena’s PhD thesis on ‘Scope and Application of Muslim Family Law in Kerala and Lakshadweep’ is nothing but a “bundle of plagiarised chapters from a variety of sources”.
The PhD degree was awarded by The Tamil Nadu Dr Ambedkar Law University in 2009.
Using plagiarism-detecting software, the SUCC contented that Sheena had “copied most of the text and even the conclusions section as such from other sources and submitted it as her own research findings”.
It also alleged that the UGC norm that only a PhD degree holder can become the research guide was flouted in the case of Sheena’s doctoral thesis.
The SUCC, in the petition, said Sheena had spent only about 10 months for her PhD degree at the Ambedkar Law University, Tamil Nadu, after her registration, that too under part-time mode, and also spent a little more than one year at the Amity University, UP, prior to that.
“This, coupled with the level of plagiarism in her thesis point to grave academic misconduct. All these demands a detailed inquiry into the matter,” the petition said.
Allegations against Sheena’s PhD thesis emerged in 2015 when she was serving as Pro-VC of MG University. Based on the then Governor P Sathasivam’s directions, the varsity had conducted an inquiry into the complaints.
However, the outcome of the probe remained unknown. Sheena chose not to react to the fresh charges against her PhD thesis. “I have nothing to say on the matter. Let them raise whatever allegation they want to raise,” Sheena told TNIE when her response was sought on the SUCC petition.
Meanwhile, the timing of the petition has raised eyebrows, with charges that it was prompted after Sheena, once a staunch Muslim League supporter, started drifting towards the Left camp.
Sheena’s act of challenging the ‘discriminatory’ aspects in Sharia law had also irked hardliners.
However, R S Sasikumar, chairman of the SUCC, refuted the charge that the petition before the governor was politically motivated and had anything to do with non-academic matters.