Scribe alleges rape, Akbar claims ‘consensual’
NEW DELHI: Editor-turned-politician MJ Akbar, who had recently resigned as a union minister after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment, has now been accused by US-based journalist Pallavi Gogoi of raping her in India 23 years ago. Akbar has dismissed the allegations as false, terming it a “consensual relationship”.
NEW DELHI: Editor-turned-politician MJ Akbar, who recently resigned as a Union minister after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment, has now been accused by a US-based journalist of raping her in India 23 years ago.
Akbar has dismissed the allegations as false, calling it a “consensual relationship”.
In a separate statement issued to a news agency, Akbar’s wife Mallika Akbar, too, dismissed the fresh accusations as a “lie”.
Mallika further insisted that the two journalists who had accused her husband of sexual harassment, would often be at their house, “happily drinking and dining with us”.
“Neither carried the haunted look of victims of sexual assault... I don’t know (her) reasons for telling this lie but a lie it is,” Mallika said in her first public statement since over 20 former colleagues of her husband came out with their versions of abuse by him. Akbar has sued one of them for defamation.
The journalist wrote in a Washington Post column published Friday that Akbar “ripped off my clothes and raped me” in a hotel room in India 23 years ago.
Both she and Akbar were colleagues in The Asian Age newspaper. In the article, she narrated a detailed account of several incidents of rape and sexual assault by Akbar, the then editor-in-chief of the paper, as “the most painful memories of my life”. She alleged Akbar once hit her over speaking to a male colleague and “went on a rampage, throwing things... at me ”.