US-based journalist Pallavi Gogoi, who has accused former minister M.J. Akbar of rape, has refuted his and his wife’s allegation that they were in a relationship.
New Delhi: US-based journalist Pallavi Gogoi, who recently accused former union minister M.J. Akbar of rape, has lashed out his claim that they were in a consensual relationship.
“Rather than take responsibility for his abuse of me and his serial predation of other young women who have courageously come forward, Akbar has insisted — just like other infamous serial sexual abusers of women — that the relationship was consensual. It was not,” she said in a statement posted on Twitter Friday.
My statement: pic.twitter.com/7xoADdIHoX
— Pallavi Gogoi (@pgogoi) November 2, 2018
Gogoi published a #MeToo account in The Washington Post Friday, detailing how she was “physically, verbally and sexually assaulted by MJ Akbar” when she worked under him as an opinion editor at The Asian Age in the 1990s. Gogoi was 23 at the time, while Akbar, the editor-in-chief and founder of the newspaper, was in his 40s.
Akbar vehemently denied the claims in a statement made to news agency ANI Friday, claiming that he had “entered into (a) consensual relationship (with Gogoi) that spanned several months”, and that “this consensual relationship ended, perhaps not on the best note”.
Taking to Twitter, Gogoi said “a relationship that is based on coercion, and abuse of power is not consensual”, adding that she stood by “every word in my published account”.
“I will continue to speak my truth so that other women who have been sexually assaulted by him know it is okay for them to come forward and speak their truth too,” she said.
Gogoi is one of more than 20 women who have accused Akbar of sexual crime, but the first to accuse him of rape.
Mired in a string of sexual harassment allegations, Akbar resigned as the minister of state for external affairs on 17 October, shortly after returning to the country from an official tour in Africa.
Also read: It was consensual: Akbar denies rape charge, wife says US journalist Pallavi Gogoi is lying
Gogoi’s allegations
In her write-up for The Washington Post Friday, Gogoi accused Akbar of “defil(ing) me sexually, verbally, emotionally”, across states and continents, while they were at The Asian Age.
According to Gogoi’s account, the alleged rape took place while she was in Rajasthan to cover an honour killing, and followed two instances of sexual assault by Akbar.
Akbar was in Jaipur at the time too. “The assignment was to end in Jaipur,” Gogoi wrote. When she checked with Akbar, she wrote, he “said I could come to discuss the story in his hotel in Jaipur…”
“In his hotel room, even though I fought him, he was physically more powerful. He ripped off my clothes and raped me,” Gogoi wrote.
“Instead of reporting him to police, I was filled with shame. I didn’t tell anyone about this then,” she added. “Would anyone have believed me? I blamed myself. Why did I go to the hotel room?”
Months of sexual, verbal, and emotional coercion followed, Gogoi said, adding that she “stopped fighting his advances because I felt so helpless”.
Akbar’s lawyer Sandeep Kapur, a partner at Karanjawala & Co who is leading the defamation proceedings launched against journalist Priya Ramani, the first accuser, told The Washington Post that his client “expressly denied” Gogoi’s allegations.
Also read: MJ Akbar says Ramani damaged his ‘stellar reputation’, calls her charges baseless in court
Akbar’s defence
Reacting to the write-up Friday, Akbar said he and Gogoi had been in a consensual relationship.
“This relationship gave rise to talk and would later cause strife in my home life as well,” he told ANI.
The former junior minister of external affairs also said his former colleagues from The Asian Age would be “happy to bear testimony to what is stated above and at no stage, did the behaviour of Pallavi Gogoi, give any one of them impression that she was working under duress”.
His wife, Mallika Akbar, also defended him, saying that watching her husband’s relationship with Gogoi flaunted caused “anguish and hurt to my entire family”. Gogoi’s allegation of rape, however, is “a lie”, she added.
She told ANI that she watched Gogoi and her husband in “mortification and pain” as they “danced close” in a room crowded with young journalists at an office party in her home.
“I had confronted my husband at the time and he decided to prioritise his family,” she said in her statement.
“I don’t know Pallavi’s reasons for telling this lie but a lie it is,” she added.