April 14, 2009

That shameless plagiarist

In recent days Bangladesh media (especially the tabloid ones) have been taken over by an Indian writer called Sunita Paul. She has been writing sensational articles on Bangladesh affairs and never bothers a bit before raging personal attacks on various persons without any valid source of information. Her famous sources are like 'according to information', 'a senior official' etc. It can be argued whether what she writes can be called journalism. She usually writes for unknown and less read online magazines like American Chronicle. But a section of of the Bangla and English newspapers are republishing her articles to amplify her baseless propaganda.

Blogger Mashuqur Rahman wrote an article in the Daily Star asking "who is Sunita Paul" and furnished evidence that she plagiarized from his blog:
On February 6, "Sunita Paul" published an article in the online publication American Chronicle with the breathless headline "Ruling party getting set to try Bangladesh Generals." Now, if the claim in the article's headline were true, this would be big news.

However, the article was thin on backing up the main charge in the headline. As one reads further through the long article though, one comes across a number of paragraphs that seemed very familiar to this author. For a very good reason. The paragraphs were originally written by me in two October 2007 articles. [The articles, titled"Banking: Junta Edition" and "In Denial" are available at:http://www.e-bangladesh.org/2007/10/page/4/]

"Sunita Paul" copied, word for word, five paragraphs that I had written in 2007 and passed them off as her own writing in 2009. No citation was given, nor did she put the passages in quotations. In other words, she has stolen someone else's words and claimed them as her own. Not only did she plagiarise, she also used copyrighted material without the author's consent.

Sunita Paul responded in the American Chronicle with a personal attack on Mashuqur Rahman calling him part of the alliance of evils:
Mashuqur Rahman calls me a plagarist and cheat. He did not cite one example behind such nasty allegation. I have never violated any copyright of any publication, ever. Wherefrom he invented this plagarism theory? Why he terms me as a 'cheat'? Just because I am not also one of the lap-dogs of Bangladesh Awami League like him?

Before publishing that she deleted the article in question from the American chronicle. But she forgot there is a thing called google cache which stores the articles. Here is the article she deleted. Need more proof Sunita Paul?

After Mash published these things in his blogs, the blogosphere started to dig dip. Shada Kalo writes:
Sunita Paul:

* Deaf
* Dumb
* Born in an affluent family in Kochin
* Twice masters (what the hell is that?)
* A Fraud
* A Plagiarist, and
* A Liar

Her bio in the American Chronicle raises more questions than answers. She claims to be a deaf and dumb and yet completed masters degree twice, that's an extra ordinary achievement for a handicapped women. However nobody heard of her before 2006. Shada Kalo gives logic to prove that she is a liar, a fraud and a plagiarist. The deaf and dumb trick is to get some sympathy and keeping away from face to face interviews.

Turns out our dear "Ms." Paul, this "twice masters" in Political Science and Journalism, would have one hand up in the air. Because there is no city/town/hamlet/village in India called Kochin. There is, however, a famous city called "Cochin", since 1967 called "Kochi." However, in its many incarnations, it has never been spelled "Kochin."

Could this be true that "Ms." Paul does not know how to spell the name of her city of birth?

Now Mash has uncovered more plagiarism from her writings:

“Sunita Paul” lifted 11 of the 13 paragraphs from Helene Cooper’s article and included them in her American Chronicle article. Nowhere in “Sunita Paul”’s article is Ms. Cooper or the New York Times given credit. Now, it is possible that the New York Times and Helene Cooper decided to waive copyright and give the entire contents of their original work to “Sunita Paul” to publish as if the words were written by her, but I very much doubt that. It is much more likely that “Sunita Paul” has plagiarized the New York Times article and tried to pass it off as her own writing.

I am sure in many articles she wrote there are some lines stolen from a newspaper article or someone's blogpost and she does it without ever crediting the source. Now either she should confess that she is a plagiarist and cheat or plagiarism should have a new meaning.

Update:

Shada Kalo exposes the contradictions in her scores of lies:
According to this article, it was known (to "Ms." Paul and "her" loyal readers) that Mr. Wajed was at the Dubai airport giving thick envelopes (presumably containing cash) to fleeing mutineers. Then why, oh why, "Joy was very dissatisfied to see long list of Awami League leaders and activists as collaborators and conspirators of the massacre" as described in the April 14 article?

I mean, if he is the paymaster of the fleeting murderers, why would Joy have to "see" the long (or short) list? Shouldn't he already know about who was involved? Why would he have to defy his mother's orders to return to Dhaka so he could instruct Sohel Taj what to tell the CID officer about the investigation? He should have known all this by February 27, and not wait until the information came out during the interrogation.

The person hiding behind the Sunita Paul pen-name fell in the typical liar's dilemma, and forgot the previous lie.

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