Romania’s government has suspended a controversial law that made prisoners eligible for a reduced sentence if they had written a book.

The rule drew criticism after anti-corruption prosecutors investigating suspicions of abuse said one 212-page book was apparently written in seven hours, leading to suspicions that works were plagiarised or ghostwritten.

Dan Suciu, a government spokesman, said on Wednesday the government had suspended the legislation until 1 September. The justice minister, Raluca Pruna, had called for it to be scrapped but was overruled by the council of magistrates.

Under the law prisoners can have their sentences reduced by 30 days for every “scientific work” they publish, subject to a judge’s decision on whether the book merits it. The justice ministry says 340 books were published by prisoners last year, up from 90 in 2014.

In April 2015, Romanian businessman Gheorghe Copos, who was serving four years in prison, was accused of plagiarism in relation to a book he allegedly wrote, titled: Matrimonial Alliances as a Policy of Romanian Kings in the XIV-XVIth Centuries. He has since been released.

Romanian justice minister Raluca Pruna has called for the law to be scrapped altogether. Photograph: AP

According to Catalin Parfene, a historian who wrote his MA thesis on the subject in 2005, Copos’s book had “an identical structure, the same historical approach, the same type of argumentation, similar expressions and passages, an identical structure of the ideas in my thesis”.

It was also, claimed Parfene, coordinated by his own thesis adviser, although he only knows this because a single copy of the book was sent to the national library as legally required; all other copies were apparently bought by the author.

In total, Copos apparently produced five books in his 400 days behind bars; he also got time off for being over 60 and working in the prison’s carpentry workshop.

Meanwhile, Gigi Becali, the controversial owner of Steaua Bucharest football club, reduced his stay in prison by writing two books, one of which was about his relationship with the team. The former politician Nicolae Vasilescu has allegedly written nine books since 2014, and jailed businessman Dinel Staicu has had seven titles published in a similar period.

Associated Press contributed to this report.