The story, which appeared on the Durban Institute of Technology (DIT) website and was compiled by first-year student Matthew Savides and third-year student Reesha Chibba, said Shaik had studied electrical engineering and was caught cheating in a T5 High Voltage Engineering exam on May 28 1990.

ML Sultan and Natal Technikon merged to form DIT in 2002.

Three documents in the possession of DIT allege that Shaik was in fact caught cheating twice during the exam. In the first incident, he was allegedly caught copying answers from crib notes.

His answer book and notes were then taken away from him and he was issued with another answer book. But 10 minutes later Shaik was again caught - this time with two other answer books, which were almost full of writing.

The students removed the names of the education officials involved and replaced them with symbols to protect their identities.

According to the article, the first document was written by an examinations controller and addressed to the examinations officer on May 29 1990. It stated: "The following was brought to my attention concerning candidate No 870107. Mr N, the invigilator at this time, saw the candidate copying answers from pieces of paper."

DIT engineering faculty assistant Neetha Singh this week confirmed that candidate number 870107 was indeed Shaik's old student number.

Kiru Naidoo, DIT vice-chancellor Dan Ncayiyana's personal assistant, later said Shaik had been brought before a disciplinary committee, "on a charge of exam irregularities and subsequently had a sentence handed down, which was to be barred as a student from the institution for 12 months".

Prof Theo Andrew, who is now the executive dean of engineering at Technikon Witwatersrand, and who was a lecturer in the department at the time, added, "I can confirm there was an incident of exam irregularity regarding Schabir Shaik."

But Shaik, who is on trial for fraud and corruption in the Durban High Court, vehemently denied that he had ever cheated.

Savides and fellow student Richard Frank, who helped with the investigation, confronted Shaik with the documents at the High Court on Thursday.

"We caught up with him during a brief adjournment but he could not talk to us then. He spoke later after the day's proceedings were finished. We asked him about his qualifications first. I earlier read in the Sunday Times that he apparently had a master's degree but we could not find any record of him having a master's," said Savides.

Shaik admitted to the two students that he did not have a master's degree but denied that he had ever cheated as a student.

"This does not pertain to me," said Shaik after being shown the documents, "I never performed any irregularities. I can't respond to this. This is so unfair and incorrect."

Savides told Saturday Star that the DIT online team had been informed of Shaik's cheating by a "well-placed source".

"When we were told of the allegations, we pursued the issue with the perception that (Shaik) was innocent. And at first it was very difficult to see any progress in our investigation. We worked on the story for almost a month," he said.

Chibba, who is also DIT online editor, said when she first heard about Shaik's alleged cheating she was "both excited and nervous at the same time", because Shaik was very much in the public eye.

"We did not write the story overnight - it actually took a long time because we wanted to be sure of our facts. But all of our efforts paid off," she said.

With acknowledgement to Saturday Star.

The generalities of Savides's and Chibba's article are fairly old news, see Stefaans Brummer's article in the Mail & Guardian dated 2002-12-13 :