{"id":58788,"date":"2020-02-09T14:53:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T09:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/?p=58788"},"modified":"2020-02-09T14:53:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T09:23:23","slug":"m-j-akbar-on-metoo-priya-ramanis-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct-figment-of-her-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/m-j-akbar-on-metoo-priya-ramanis-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct-figment-of-her-imagination","title":{"rendered":"M J Akbar on #MeToo: Priya Ramani&#8217;s allegations of sexual misconduct figment of her imagination."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Union Minister M J Akbar told a Delhi court Friday that scribe Priya Ramani&#8217;s accusations of sexual misconduct against him in the wake of #MeToo movement in 2018 were &#8220;figment of her imagination&#8221; and caused him &#8220;great humiliation&#8221; and &#8220;irreparably damaged his reputation&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Akbar made the allegations before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vishal Pahuja through his lawyer during the final hearing of a private criminal defamation complaint filed by him against Ramani after his name cropped up on social media as the #MeToo campaign raged on in India.<\/p>\n<p>Akbar resigned as Union minister on October 17, 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Ramani in 2018 accused Akbar of sexual misconduct around 20 years ago when he was a journalist. She worked at the Asian Age from January to October in 1994.<\/p>\n<p>Senior advocate Geeta Luthra, appearing for Akbar, said that if there was any grievance, it had to be raised then and there before the appropriate authority.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Allegations are a figment of her (Ramani&#8217;s) imagination. Things that I (Akbar) took 49-45 years to build, without any sense of responsibility, were trashed,&#8221; Luthra said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Akbar-case_7446.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"55304\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/metoo-court-summons-scribe-priya-ramani-in-defamation-case-by-m-j-akbar\/akbar-case_7446\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Akbar-case_7446.jpg?fit=696%2C522&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"696,522\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Akbar-case_7446\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Akbar-case_7446.jpg?fit=640%2C480&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-55304\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Akbar-case_7446.jpg?resize=640%2C480&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Akbar-case_7446.jpg?w=696&amp;ssl=1 696w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Akbar-case_7446.jpg?resize=133%2C100&amp;ssl=1 133w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.legalindia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/01\/Akbar-case_7446.jpg?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>&#8220;Can you expect a man to answer to something which you allege happened 20-25 years ago? Why now? What is the public good that you are claiming? If there is a grievance, it has to be raised then and there before the appropriate authority&#8230; I don&#8217;t want to jump onto a political bandwagon,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My whole life has gone without any controversy&#8230; Can you mar anybody&#8217;s life without any impunity, without any evidence? We can&#8217;t be a social media country,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>While referring to an article written by Ramani, which was allegedly termed Akbar a &#8220;predator&#8221; and a &#8220;pervert&#8221;, she said the allegations were &#8220;false narrative&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This has caused great humiliation to Akbar and his reputation has been irreparably damaged. He developed a reputation and that&#8217;s why he was a Minister (of State) of External Affairs. He wrote extensively on South Asia. In that sense, the country needs such people,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>She further added, &#8220;You (Ramani) are a person who is saying things without bothering. You are tarnishing someone&#8217;s image without bothering.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The court will further hear the matter on February 28.<\/p>\n<p>Akbar has denied all the allegations of sexual harassment against the women, who came forward during #MeToo campaign against him.<\/p>\n<p>Ramani accused Akbar of sexual misconduct when he was a journalist, a charge denied by him.<\/p>\n<p>Akbar had earlier told the court that the allegations made in an article in the &#8216;Vogue&#8217; and the subsequent tweets were defamatory on the face of it as the complainant had deposed them to be false and imaginary and that an &#8220;immediate damage&#8221; was caused to him due to the &#8220;false&#8221; allegations by Ramani.<\/p>\n<p>Ramani had earlier told the court that her &#8220;disclosure&#8221; of alleged sexual harassment by Akbar has come at &#8220;a great personal cost&#8221; and she had &#8220;nothing to gain&#8221; from it.<\/p>\n<p>She had said her move would empower women to speak up and make them understand their rights at workplace.<\/p>\n<p>Several women came up with accounts of the alleged sexual harassment by him while they were working as journalists under Akbar.<\/p>\n<p>He has termed the allegations &#8220;false, fabricated and deeply distressing&#8221; and said he was taking appropriate legal action against them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Union Minister M J Akbar told a Delhi court Friday that scribe Priya Ramani&#8217;s accusations of sexual misconduct against him in the wake of #MeToo movement in 2018 were &#8220;figment of her imagination&#8221; and caused him &#8220;great humiliation&#8221; and &#8220;irreparably damaged his reputation&#8221;. Akbar made the allegations before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vishal Pahuja [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1954],"tags":[46218,44025,46216,44022,46217],"class_list":["post-58788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-profile-cases","tag-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct","tag-m-j-akbar","tag-m-j-akbar-on-metoo","tag-priya-ramani","tag-priya-ramanis-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>M J Akbar on #MeToo: Priya Ramani&#039;s allegations of sexual misconduct figment of her imagination. - Legal News India - Supreme Court &amp; High Court Updates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Union Minister M J Akbar told a Delhi court Friday that scribe Priya Ramani&#039;s accusations of sexual misconduct against him in the wake of #MeToo - Get the latest legal news from the Supreme Court, High Courts, and government. 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