Copies of Kaavya Viswanathan’s book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life being removed from a window display at the Harvard Coop bookstore last week. (AFP)

New Delhi, May 2 (PTI): Describing Kaavya Viswanathan as “a victim of her own ambition”, well-known writer Salman Rushdie has refused to accept the India-born novelist’s plea that she is innocent of plagiarism in her debut novel.

“I haven’t seen the book, I have seen the passages that were compared between the two books. I must say I don’t accept the idea that this could have been accidentally or innocently done. The passages are too many and the similarities are too expensive,” Rushdie told a news channel.

He said he was sorry that “this young girl, pushed by the needs of a publishing machine and, no doubt, by her ambition, should have fallen into this trap so early in her career. I hope she can recover from it”.

He held both author and publisher responsible for the mess.