Foreign PhD Student Lodges Police Report Against Uni Supervisors, Accuses Them Of Stealing His Research

In school, it is not rare to find that your homework or assignments have been stolen or copied by others. However, how often do you hear of students getting their hard work copied by the institutions they are under?

Recently, a PhD student lodged a police report against his supervisors from a public university in KL for allegedly unfairly expelling him and stealing his work and research.

According to Media Variasi, they had received the complaint from Abbod Ali Mohammed Saeed who is a PhD student from Yemen.

Stolen data

Abbod who is studying on a solution to a transportation issue that has never existed in Malaysia, which is using Meshlium scanners to track vehicles told the portal that his system, research and PhD data were misused by 2 supervisors who were believed to be using it for their personal business interests.

Through the police report and the affidavit submitted by him, he claimed that he had proposed the topic back in early 2015 to his supervisors to use the Meshlium scanner in the Advance Intelligent Transportation System (AITS) who agreed to make it a PhD topic.

“The supervisor offered me to use the project within the university’s research company and we shared the patent rights according to the university’s rules and laws,” he explained.

“However, after the study was completed in 2017, suddenly the password to access my system was changed and the supervisor informed me that the system had become the property of his company which had nothing to do with the university.”

“I have reported this issue to the university management, however after that the supervisor asked me to continue the study because he claimed that it was not complete. The supervisor also did not allow me to use the equipment to complete the study because he claimed it belonged to his company,” he added.

Abbod said that he has complained about this to the university, who promised to resolve this issue by extending 3 semesters and providing the necessary equipment. “But I found that there is no equipment available in the university laboratory.”

“During the second semester, last April, I was shocked to receive a letter of sudden termination of studies. I felt mistreated, bullied and used for their benefit.”

He has lodged a police report on August 14 and in the affidavit letter, he also claimed to have all the evidence and documents confirming that the ideas, proposals, papers and research data were his.

Not the only one

More surprisingly, Abbod claimed that the same incident happened to several other local students who also claimed that their work was stolen.

“There are Master’s students who spent 7 years to complete their work but could not stand facing an aggressive supervisor,” he said.

Following the incident, he claimed to have experienced stress and depression.

“The abuse of power has occurred by taking my research data of 7 years, preventing me from getting the research data I worked on, not giving me another supervisor, preventing me from conducting the final experiment to complete the PhD and making a false evaluation report to which I was then expelled,” he said.

“I have spent hundreds of thousands of ringgit to gain knowledge in Malaysia from the Degree level to the PhD. Even though it took 15 years of study. This time I was humiliated, given wrong information and a wrong picture about myself.”

“Even though they are Muslims, they do not practice the Islamic principles of not persecuting, not oppressing others. I am begging the police and the Ministry of Higher Education to conduct an investigation so that I may be the last student to receive such a fate,” he stated.

Abbod said that he just wants to finish his PhD and return to Yemen since his mother is also sick.

Have you heard of other similar instances?

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