MJ Akbar: the 16th woman has spoken out

In the space of two hours, two more women have come forward with their accusations of sexual harassment against minister MJ Akbar, a day after Akbar filed a criminal defamation case against journalist Priya Ramani.

Swati Gautam wrote her story in The Quint. As a convenor of the then annual Father Jorris Memorial Nihil Ultra Debate, at St Xavier’s College (Calcutta) Alumni Association, she invited Akbar as a speaker. She writes, “At The Taj hotel, he went up to his room saying that he would freshen up and then talk. A while later, I was requested to come upstairs to discuss the event and his potential participation.”

When he opened the door to his room, Gautam writes that Akbar was wearing a bathrobe,  and later “rolled” a glass towards her to make a drink.

The second story is Tushita Patel’s in Scroll. This took place in 1992 Calcutta when she had been a trainee at Telegraph. After she met Akbar with colleagues, Akbar obtained her home phone number and telephoned her incessantly, asking her to come to his hotel. When she finally went, she writes, “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.” Later in 1993 in Hyderabad, when Akbar was editor-in-chief of Deccan Chronicle: “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.”

These women have become the 15th and 16th women, respectively, to speak out against MJ Akbar.