Washington, Aug. 4 : The curtain may have gone up on the mysterious departure of Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's highly visible and hugely popular ambassador to the US, at the pinnacle of her career. Lodhi gave up her job to Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, until recently high commissioner in New Delhi, on Friday, a day before an American university professor of Pakistani origin in Pennsylvania openly alleged that the journalist-turned-ambassador had plagiarised her Ph.D. thesis at the London School of Economics (LSE), and subsequently, an article she had written in 1983 for an academic journal in the US. Washington's media circuit, where Lodhi was a regular fixture, and its large diplomatic community were completely taken by surprise when Lodhi announced a few months ago that she was quitting her job as ambassador here. Especially since she used to boast that the high point of her career was late last year when Pakistan was transformed from its near-pariah status in the US as a dictatorship which fostered Islamic terrorism to the darling of the White House and the staunchest ally of the Pentagon. But it now turns out that Hafeez Malik, professor of political science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, had written to secretary of state Colin Powell as early as February this year urging the Bush administration to declare Lodhi persona non grata and send her back to Pakistan. A potential scandal about her alleged plagiarism has clearly been in the making since then. 'Maleeha Lodhi, who has stolen the intellectual property of an American scholar, must be taught an appropriate lesson,' Malik wrote to Powell. He has also represented to LSE, seeking a full investigation into Lodhi's alleged plagiarism and seeking revocation of her Ph.D. degree if the allegations are proved. In addition to being a professor at Villanova, Malik is editor of the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, which published Lodhi's article in 1983. He has authored or edited 13 books on international affairs and is a visiting professor at the Foreign Service Institute of the US state department. Malik's dogged campaign against Lodhi is not, however, entirely unselfish. Some time ago, Lodhi publicly insulted Malik by asking him to leave a formal dinner hosted by her after the professor said at the repast that Islamabad should not send women envoys to Washington. The full story of the ambassador's alleged plagiarism has been exposed this weekend in South Asia Tribune, a web newspaper here founded by Pakistani journalist Shaheen Sehbai. Sehbai, who was until recently editor of The News, an English daily which is part of the Jang group of publications, fled Pakistan in February to escape the wrath of General Pervez Musharraf, who wanted three staffers of the newspaper sacked. In a letter to Sehbai, Philip E. Jones, whose work was allegedly plagiarised by Lodhi, has confirmed that 'much of what she wrote in that (1983) article was taken from my Ph.D. thesis. She did footnote the thesis once, but there were a number of word-for-word borrowings, which she did not footnote. This I know and can demonstrate'. Jones is a professor at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. His doctoral dissertation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in April 1979 was on 'The Pakistan People's Party: Social Group Response and Party Development in An Era of Mass Participation'. Lodhi's doctoral thesis at LSE two years later was on 'Bhutto, The Pakistan People's Party and Political Development in Pakistan: 1971-77'. Jones has confirmed that Shahid Javed Burki, a Pakistani who was vice-president of the World Bank more than two decades ago, had sought a copy of his thesis to be sent to 'a student in London who also was writing on the Pakistan People's Party'.