The vice-chancellor of an Uttar Pradesh university who is being investigated by a special task force of police over allegations of extorting an infotech company also faces accusations of plagiarism and misrepresentation of facts in his CV, levelled by a teachers’ body.

Vinay Kumar Pathak, VC of the Chhatrapati Sahu Ji Maharaj University, Kanpur, had inflated by a year his experience as a professor in his CV while applying for the vice-chancellor’s post with the Uttarakhand Open University in 2009, according to the Technical Universities Teachers Association of Uttar Pradesh.

It says Pathak repeated the falsehood while applying for the VC’s post with the Uttar Pradesh Technical University in 2015.

The teachers’ body, which complained to the Prime Minister’s Office, governor and the Union education ministry in April 2021 seeking an inquiry, also flagged alleged plagiarism in two articles published by Pathak and one of his PhD students in 2010 and 2013.

The complaint alleged that the paper “Clinical gait data analysis based on Spatio temporal Features”, published in the International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security in February 2010, was entirely plagiarised from a paper, “Extracting a diagnostic gait signature”, published in the journal Elsevier by Heba Lakany in 2007.

Another paper, “A Study on Existing Gait Biometrics Approaches and Challenges”, published in the International Journal of Computer Science Issues in 2013, had over 50 per cent similarity with parts of four previously published research papers, the complaint alleged.

According to academic standards, up to 10 per cent of similarity in text is considered acceptable.

The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition from Pathak seeking quashing of the extortion FIR, lodged at Indira Nagar police station in Lucknow on October 29 by an official of the IT firm Digitex Technologies, David Mario.

An email sent by The Telegraph to Pathak’s official account on November 15 seeking his reaction to the charges of academic misconduct and extortion brought a reply from his office on November 17.

“Prof Pathak is on leave owing to some medical emergency. As soon as he will resume office, we will put up the mail and that will be answered accordingly,” it said.

Several independent academics corroborated the teacher association’s allegations against Pathak, who they said was politically well connected, but did not wish to be quoted.

According to the teacher association, Pathak’s CV claimed he had been elevated as a professor in January 2006 at the Harcourt Butler Technical Institute, Kanpur, while in reality he became a professor only in January 2007.

Pathak, who got his PhD in computer science 2004, served as VC at the Uttarakhand university (August 2009-August 12), Vardhamaan Mahaveer Open University in Kota (February 2013-August 2015), Uttar Pradesh Technical University which later became the Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University (August 2015-August 2021), and Chhatrapati Sahu Ji Maharaj University (since April 2021).

He held additional charge as VC of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Agra, from January to September 2022.

According to the extortion FIR, the IT firm had been providing exam-related services to Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University, which had kept the payments for 2020-21 and 202122 pending.

In February this year, Mario contacted Pathak, who was officiating VC of the university at the time, for payment.

Pathak demanded 15 per cent of the total as commission for clearing the bills, the FIR says. Mario says Pathak told him he (Pathak) would have to pay a part of the commission to higher authorities.

Pathak allegedly added that he had a big role in the appointment of VCs to state-run universities in Uttar Pradesh, apparently to impress Mario. According to the FIR, Pathak and an aide collected about Rs 1.41 core from the company in three instalments as commission to clear the dues.

Pathak then allegedly demanded an additional Rs 10 lakh to ensure the company’s contract would continue.

The contract was terminated when the company refused to pay the bribe, the FIR says.