After Union Minister MJ Akbar has filed a defamation case against journalist Priya Ramani, the first woman to file sexual assault, 3 more women have come out against him.
As per the latest reports, journalist Tushita Patel has raised her voice against the sexual assault that she faced during the 1990’s.
In an article to a leading daily, Tushita Patel said that she was sexually assaulted by him twice. At the time of the incident, she was 22-years old, one on the teams that started Asian Age where MJ Akbar was the editor on the newspaper for 15 years.
Her first encounter was in 1992 in Kolkata, when she was a trainee in the Telegraph – another newspaper that MJ Akbar helmed apart from the Asian Age.
She said after she met Akbar at a hotel along with colleagues, he found out her phone number and called her incessantly, asking her to meet him at his hotel. She says he “wore me down” and one day she did go, and rang his doorbell.
“You opened the door dressed only in your underwear. I stood at the door, stricken, scared and awkward. You stood there like the VIP man, amused by my fear… Does greeting a 22-year-old in a state of undress pass your test of morality? Is that not “doing” something?” Her reference was to the minister’s defence that his accusers had said he didn’t “do” anything.
In another incident, Akbar allegedly summoned Ms Patel to his hotel again for work. “Suddenly you got up, grabbed me and kissed me hard – your stale tea breath and your bristly moustache are still etched in the recesses of my memory. I wriggled out and ran till I reached the road, jumped into an auto rickshaw and started crying.”
It happened again the next morning, said Ms Patel. “You ushered me into the empty conference room, grabbed me again and kissed me. Defeated, humiliated, blinded by hurt and tears, I stayed in that room till I stopped crying. I waited till you had left the building, went to the bathroom, washed my face and carried on to finish my page.”
Tushita Patel concluded stating: “…So please stop with the lying… And enough with the legal intimidation – we can see you in court too. We are not confused, conflicted or vulnerable any more. Our time to speak is now – when we don’t have to run to a police station to lodge a complaint before anyone would give us a hearing.”
The journalist quit the Asian Age in 2000.
18th woman too has spoken out on her experience.
Businesswoman Swati Gautam, writing for The Quint, claimed Akbar met her in his hotel room dressed only in his bathrobe when she was a student in Kolkata and went to invite him as a guest speaker for an event at St Xavier’s College.
Gautam alleged that Akbar rolled a glass down to her, suggesting she make a drink for him.
“When my initial shock wore off, I too bent down and rolled it back at him. That buoyed me up. Giving him a hard stare, I got up and walked out of that dratted room and as far away as I could from The Bathrobe …,” she said.
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