Controversial journalist Barkha Dutt’s sister Bahar Dutt was caught in a plagiarism row when nature and wildlife writer Janaki Lenin accused her of lifting paragraphs from her 2007 essay “The Song of the Ganges Gharial”. Taking to Twitter, Janaki alleged that Bahar Dutt’s book ‘Rewilding’ has portions of her essay lifted off almost verbatim.
https://twitter.com/JanakiLenin/status/1208991756487802880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Janaki cited her own essay and shared a screenshot from Dutt’s book which were quite similar.
https://twitter.com/JanakiLenin/status/1208992416499265537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Her subsequent tweets showed Dutt’s book had exact same words as her essay.
https://twitter.com/JanakiLenin/status/1208993916764053504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/JanakiLenin/status/1208994293651607552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/JanakiLenin/status/1208995051839180800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Bahar Dutt’s clarification
Dutt, however, refuted these allegations and said that she had quoted Romulus Whitaker, wildlife conservationist.
https://twitter.com/bahardutt/status/1209035118829944832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Expressing shock at the allegations, Dutt said how her emails to Whitaker were on record and were based on the papers sent by him. She adds that the references to the papers she has used in her book are mentioned in the references section.
https://twitter.com/bahardutt/status/1209035371255697410?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
To another quote, she mentioned that in her book she had attributed the above quote to Rom as it was given to her by him. “If you were writing on his behalf, why did you not mention?” she asked Lenin. Rom is also Janaki Lenin’s husband. Responding to Dutt’s clarification, Lenin reprimanded her for not putting the verbatim quotes in quotation mark.
https://twitter.com/JanakiLenin/status/1209044861871017985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Lenin has further asked Dutt to share the email exchange between Dutt and her husband, Rom, as she has claimed.