Washington : A US-based editor of a leading media house has accused former Union minister M J Akbar of raping her in India 23 years ago, saying the "brilliant journalist" used his position as the editor-in-chief of a newspaper to prey on her, an allegation denied by his lawyer. 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.
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. 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. PTI
