INDIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Vs. PROF. INDU BHUSHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present petition has been filed by the petitioners under Sec. 561-A Cr.P.C. (now 482 Cr.P.C) for quashing of criminal proceedings in complaint titled "Professor Indu Bhushan Sharma Vs Dr Devinder Singh and others" pending before the Court of learned Special Mobile Magistrate (Passenger Tax Shops and Establishment Act) (hereinafter to be referred as the trial court) filed under Sec. 417,420, 120-B.

(2.) It is stated that petitioner No. 1 is a society registered under the Societies Registration Act and is based in Bangalore. The Society was established by a renowned scientist Sir, C. V. Raman and its aim is to disseminate science to the mankind. The petitioner No. 2 is the editor, whose role is to find the suitable and competent reviewers to access the suitability of the paper received for publication as per the policy and guidelines stipulated by the Academy.

(3.) It is further stated that proforma respondent Nos. 2 and 3 submitted their manuscripts titled Synthesis and Characterization of Ruddlesden- Poper(RP) type phase LaSr2MnCrO7 on 5/2/2010 and revised it on 22/4/2010 as per reviewer(s) recommendations and the paper was accepted by the petitioner's board for publication in the Journal on 4/5/2010 and the same was published in journal of Chemical Sciences (vol. 122 No. 6/11/2010 PP 807-811). After two years of its publication, a complaint of plagiarism was received by the petitioners from respondent No. 1 alleging that the complainant i.e. respondent No. 1 is one of the co-authors of manuscript and while sending the manuscript for publication, name of respondent No. 1 has been deliberately omitted. The said complaint was considered by the petitioner and the matter was placed before the Editorial Board of Journal of Chemical Sciences at its meeting held on 8/9/2012. The Editorial Board members were of the view that since there was no mechanism to find out the claim of the complainant/respondent No: 1, so it was unanimously decided to refer to the concerned University i.e. University of Jammu for investigation. Thereafter University of Jammu submitted a detailed investigation report on the request of the petitioners, wherein it was stated that research work published in Journal of Chemical Sciences, has been done by respondent No. 3 under the supervision of respondent No. 2. It was also stated that respondent No. 1 was earlier the supervisor of respondent No. 3 and was removed on complaint basis and respondent No. 2 was made the supervisor. The allegations of the plagiarism were categorically refuted by the University.