India's junior foreign minister Sunday dismissed sexual harassment allegations made against him by several women, mostly journalists, and ducked calls for his resignation as the country's fledgling MeToo movement gathers pace.
M.J Akbar, a veteran newspaper editor before joining politics, issued a two-page rejoinder in which he said allegations of sexual misconduct when he was a journalist were "without evidence". "Allegations of misconduct made against me are false and fabricated. These false, baseless and wild allegations have caused irreparable damage to my reputation," Akbar said in a statement.
"Accusation without evidence has become a viral fever among some sections. Whatever be the case, now that I have returned, my lawyers will look into these (claims)," the statement added. Akbar, a minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government who has just returned from a trip to Africa, went on to question some of his accusers in the rejoinder. Journalist Ghazala Wahab wrote a long MeToo post for online news website The Wire earlier in the week, accusing Akbar of harassment and saying Akbar had "sexually harassed and molested" her. "This is my story. My last six months as a journalist at Asian Age, the newspaper he edited, were pure hell with repeated physical advances," she wrote.
Akbar claimed that Wahab's account was "an effort to damage my reputation." "The only office where I worked with her was that of The Asian Age. A part of the editorial team then worked out of a small hall," it said. "It is utterly bizzare to believe that anything could have happened in that tiny space, and, moreover, that no one else in that vicinity would come to know," Akbar added.
The minister also questioned the account of journalist Priya Ramani, who was the first to publicly accuse him of inappropriate behaviour.