Former Union Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar on Friday rejected rape allegations leveled by a US-based editor of a leading media house and claimed they were in a consensual relationship.
Former Union Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar on Friday rejected rape allegations leveled by a US-based editor of a leading media house and claimed they were in a consensual relationship.
The latest allegation of rape was levelled against him by Pallavi Gogoi, the chief business editor of National Public Radio (NPR), a Washington-based American media organisation.
She has detailed the 'most painful memories' of her life in an article in The Washington Post.'
However, denying the allegations levelled by the journalist, Akbar said that somewhere around 1994, Ms. Pallavi Gogoi and he entered into consensual relationship that spanned several months.
Stating that he had read the Washington Post piece written by Gogoi, detailing false allegations of rape and violence against him, Akbar said, "I have had occasion to read this article and it has become necessary, at this point in time, to bring certain facts to light."
"The relationship gave rise to talk and would later cause strife in my home life as well. This consensual relationship ended, perhaps not on the best note," Akbar said in a statement to ANI.
Akbar further stated that the people who worked with him knew both of them and have indicated that they would be happy to bear testimony to what is stated above and at no stage, did the behavior of Pallavi Gogoi, give any one of them impression that she was working under
duress.
Akbar, 67, who resigned from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Union Council of Ministers in October after multiple women came out with accounts of alleged sexual harassment, has filed a criminal defamation case against one of them amid the raging #MeToo campaign in India.
Akbar's lawyer Sandeep Kapur said: "My client states that these (allegations) are false and expressly denied".
Gogoi said that Akbar, the editor in chief of the Asian Age newspaper at that time, was a brilliant journalist but used his position to prey on her.
"What I am about to share are the most painful memories of my life. I have shelved them away for 23 years," she said, detailing how Akbar physically and mentally harassed her for years while working at the Asian Age newspaper from New Delhi to Mumbai to Jaipur to London.
Gogoi said she was 22 when she joined the Asian Age. She was star-struck working under Akbar. She was mesmerised by his use of language, his turns of phrase and took all the verbal abuse.
At 23, Gogoi became the editor of the op-ed page which was a big responsibility at a young age, she said.
"But I would soon pay a very big price for doing a job I loved.
"It must have been late spring or summer of 1994, and I had gone into his office his door was often closed. I went to show him the op-ed page I had created with what I thought were clever headlines. He applauded my effort and suddenly lunged to kiss me. I reeled. I emerged from the office, red-faced, confused, ashamed, destroyed," she alleged.
The second incident was a few months later when she was summoned to Mumbai to help launch a magazine, she claimed.
"He called me to his room at the fancy Taj hotel, again to see the layouts. When he again came close to me to kiss me, I fought him and pushed him away. He scratched my face as I ran away, tears streaming down. That evening, I explained the scratches to a friend by telling her I had slipped and fallen at the hotel," she wrote in the Post.
One story took her to a remote village a few hundred miles from Delhi and the assignment was to end in Jaipur. When she checked back, Akbar said she could come discuss the story in his hotel in Jaipur, she claimed.
"In his hotel room, even though I fought him, he was physically more powerful. He ripped off my clothes and raped me," she alleged, adding that instead of reporting him to the police, she was filled with shame.
"I didn't tell anyone about this then. Would anyone have believed me? I blamed myself," Gogoi said.
Gogoi claimed that Akbar's grip over her got tighter. For a few months, he continued to defile her sexually, verbally, emotionally. He would burst into loud rages in the newsroom if he saw her talking to male colleagues. It was frightening.
Journalists from multiple media platforms have come forward claiming harassment by Akbar under the "#MeToo" social media campaign against sexual misconduct.Akbar was in Africa when the allegations surfaced against him.
Akbar, who has filed a criminal defamation case against journalist Priya Ramani, told a Delhi court on Wednesday that an "immediate damage" has been caused to him due to the 'scurrilous', concocted and false allegations of sexual misconduct levelled against him.
The court has fixed November 12 for further hearing of the case when the statements of witnesses named by Akbar will be recorded.
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