Former editor MJ Akbar termed a 'predator'

New Delhi - The first journalist-turned politician to be named as the #MeToo movement gained momentum was MJ Akbar.

Amid India's #MeToo media moment, an association of editors has called for investigations into all allegations of harassment of women in newsrooms, while a journalists' network is setting up a help line to report incidents.
Women working in media across the country have been sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse in posts to Facebook and Twitter, using the hashtag #MeToo.
The Editors Guild of India said it "extends its total support to all women journalists, who suffered a disadvantage in their careers, physical or mental trauma, as a result of any sexual predation."
More than a dozen complaints of sexual harassment and other sexual misconduct have been levelled online in recent days against prominent actors, movie directors, comedians and other public figures, including journalists.
The first journalist-turned politician to be named as the #MeToo movement gained momentum was MJ Akbar, India's junior foreign minister and a former editor. The Indian Express reported on Wednesday on several women's allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Akbar during his time in the news business, while a first-person account in The Wire alleged that he had sexually harassed a young journalist over many months during his time as editor in the 1990s.
Priya Ramani, the first journalist to go public with the allegations, identified Akbar as the unnamed editor whose inappropriate behaviour she had written about in an article last year.
Ramani said she was 23 when Akbar called her to a Mumbai hotel room for a job interview around 20 years ago.
Akbar was "an expert on obscene phone calls, texts, inappropriate compliments and not taking no for an answer," she said in the article which she reposted on Twitter on Monday.
"You know how to pinch, pat, rub, grab and assault. Speaking up against you still carries a heavy price that many young women cannot afford to pay."
Writing in The Wire, Ghazala Wahab, another journalist, narrating her sexual harassment allegedly by Akbar, said: "In my third year at the Asian Age, the office culture hit home. His eyes fell on me. And my nightmare began. My desk was shifted to just outside his cabin, perpendicularly opposite his desk, so that if the door to his room was left slightly open, I was face to face with him. He would sit at his desk and watch me all the time, often sending me lewd messages on the Asian Age intranet network." Wahab described several instances when Akbar groped and held her in his office cabin after closing the door.
Journalist Saba Naqvi also penned a similar experience with Akbar. She wrote in dailyO: "He shares the name with a grand Mughal Emperor; he behaved like a village Thakur who set off to claim any young thing that caught his fancy....What I experienced in my first job was different. I was dealing with a predator, who would have had a high success rate in pinning down his prey. His genius and talent was made an excuse for his behaviour but when the moral centre is hollow, even cleverness wears thin, as it has done with the Badshah."
But Seema Mustafa, a senior journalist, who has worked with Akbar, was short of being supportive to the minister after the former journalist caught up in the #MeToo firestorm. "I did not see or speak with Akbar for a decade, and then at some point joined the Asian Age. It was here that one became aware of his growing interest in younger girls, and while many joined and stayed the course there were no complaints from the Bureau. Not a single, a fact I verified with recent conversations with former colleagues. He left the Bureau completely alone, never hassled any girl, communicated with reporters (including men) directly through me, adopting a hands off approach for all the time I worked there. I stayed because he gave me full space, did not interfere, and remained polite through the years I was there," wrote Mustafa in The Citizen.
"But now I read the story of Ghazala Wahab, a case of total harassment and nastiness by MJ Akbar. Out of the MeToo movement, but a strong indictment of the editor and his behaviour. A confirmation of what we thought he did, and had little by way of evidence. She says she spoke to me, and I am sure she is right. If she spoke to me she did not share the details as she has written them now," wrote Mustafa.
Maneka Gandhi, the Minister for Women and Child Development, has said that allegations of sexual harassment against anybody should be taken seriously and that there is no time limit on coming forward with such complaints, according to interviews in the local media.
Meanwhile, the Congress on Wednesday asked Akbar to either come clean following sexual harassment charges against him or resign. It also sought an independent probe into the charges against Akbar.
"Akbar has a stature as a journalist, apart from being a Minister. He should offer a satisfactory explanation either through a statement or personally, or resign forthwith," Congress spokesperson S. Jaipal Reddy told the media here.
"How can he be in the Ministry with such serious allegations levelled by responsible journalists who have worked with him. Let there be an inquiry. We demand an inquiry against Akbar," said Reddy.
The Congress also targeted the Modi government, including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, for keeping mum on the issue.
"We had hoped that women cutting across political lines will come out in support of these brave women who have now come out and revealed their ordeal and tragic stories. Unfortunately, Sushma Swaraj, to whom many look up to for inspiration, has chosen to stay quiet," said Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi. "It also raises a finger at the government that talks of women empowerment and safety but maintains a dubious silence on the matter," she said.
While Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday ducked media queries on the allegations against Akbar, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday refused to answer any question other than those pertaining to Cabinet decisions.
Chaturvedi also demanded an apology from BJP MP Udit Raj, who on Tuesday sought to question why women were coming out with their stories 10 years after the alleged incidents and dubbed it as the "beginning of wrong practice".
The allegations against Akbar open up a new risk for India's political parties, which count among their state and federal representatives, politicians facing 48 cases related to crimes against women, based on data from the Association for Democratic Reforms, which works toward better governance in politics. Akbar has no such cases against him.

How it all started?