US-based journalist says Akbar raped her 23 yrs ago; he says it was 'consensual relationship'

Pallavi Gogoi, a US-based editor, has accused M J Akbar of raping her while working under the "brilliant journalist" in India, an allegation denied by the former Union minister who claimed that he had a "consensual relationship" spanning several months with her but it ended "perhaps not on the best note".

Akbar, 67, who recently resigned as junior foreign minister after multiple women came out with accounts of alleged sexual harassment, has filed a criminal defamation case against one of them amid the raging #MeToo campaign in India.

"Somewhere around 1994, Ms Pallavi Gogoi and I entered into a consensual relationship that spanned several months," Akbar said in a statement in New Delhi after her article appeared in The Washington Post.

In a separate statement, his wife Mallika Akbar also dismissed Gogoi's accusations as a "lie".

Gogoi, the chief business editor of National Public Radio (NPR), a Washington-based American media organisation, has detailed the "most painful memories" of her life in the Post article.

She said that Akbar, the editor-in-chief of the Asian Age newspaper at that time, was a "brilliant journalist but used his position to prey" on her.

"What I am about to share are the most painful memories of my life. I have shelved them away for 23 years," she said, detailing how Akbar physically and mentally harassed her for years while working at the Asian Age newspaper from New Delhi to Mumbai to Jaipur to London.

Gogoi said she was 22 when she joined the Asian Age. She was star-struck working under Akbar. She was mesmerised by his use of language, his turns of phrase and took all the verbal abuse.

At 23, Gogoi became the editor of the op-ed page which was a big responsibility at a young age, she said.

"But I would soon pay a very big price for doing a job I loved.

"It must have been late spring or summer of 1994, and I had gone into his office his door was often closed. I went to show him the op-ed page I had created... He applauded my effort and suddenly lunged to kiss me. I reeled. I emerged from the office, red-faced, confused, ashamed, destroyed," she alleged.

The second incident was a few months later when she was summoned to Mumbai to help launch a magazine, she claimed.

"He called me to his room at the fancy Taj hotel, again to see the layouts. When he again came close to me to kiss me, I fought him and pushed him away. He scratched my face as I ran away, tears streaming down," she wrote.

When she got back to Delhi, Akbar threatened to kick her out of the job if she resisted him again. But she didn't quit the paper, she said.

While she was in Rajasthan on an assignment, Akbar said she could come to discuss the story in his hotel in Jaipur, she claimed.

"In his hotel room, even though I fought him, he was physically more powerful. He ripped off my clothes and raped me," she alleged, adding that instead of reporting him to the police, she was filled with shame.

Gogoi claimed Akbar's grip over her got tighter. For a few months, he continued to defile her sexually, verbally, emotionally... "I died a little every day," she said.

Akbar said he would send her either to the US or the UK as a reward for excellent work on covering the 1994 polls, she recalled.

"I thought that finally, the abuse would stop... Except the truth was that he was sending me away so I could have no defences and he could prey on me whenever he visited the city," she said.

Gogoi alleged that Akbar once worked himself into a rage in the London office after he saw her talking to a male colleague. He hit her and went on a rampage, throwing things from the desk at her a pair of scissors or whatever he could get his hands on. She ran away and hid in Hyde Park.

"I was in shreds emotionally, physically, mentally," she said.

Akbar summoned her back to Mumbai after which she left the job.

Responding to Gogoi's allegations, Akbar said several people who worked with him knew about his relationship with her and at no stage did her behaviour give any one of them the impression that she was "working under, or in any way, under duress".

"This relationship (with Gogoi) gave rise to talk and would later cause significant strife in my home life as well. This consensual relationship ended, perhaps not on the best note.

"In the past few weeks, I have been subjected to a barrage of false and fabricated accusations, which I am now addressing," Akbar said.

In her statement, his wife Mallika admitted that she knew about the relationship between her husband and Gogoi, and the relationship caused unhappiness and discord in her family.

Gogoi, in an earlier tweet, thanked the "journalists who have spoken out before me. I stand on their shoulders".

In the Post article, Gogoi said: "Today, I am a US citizen. I am a wife and mother. I found my love for journalism again. I picked up my life, piece by piece... Today, I'm a leader at National Public Radio. I know that I do not have to succumb to assault to have a job and succeed.

"Over the years, I have not brought up Akbar in conversations. I've always felt that Akbar is above the law and justice doesn't apply to him. I felt he would never pay the price for what he had done to me".

He has called these allegations "baseless and wild" and has filed a lawsuit against one of the journalists who have spoken out, she said.

"It doesn't surprise me. He feels he is entitled to make up his own version of 'truth' today, just like he felt entitled to our bodies then," Gogoi added.