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No Fear No Favour

MJ Akbar vs Priya Ramani: This is what Rebecca John has to say in her Final Arguments.

By Ishank Katyal

New Delhi: In October 2018, many female colleagues had accused the BJP Member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha and a former journalist MJ Akbar for sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement in India, Especially by Priya Ramani, a journalist and writer from Mumbai alleged with a series of tweets that Akbar has sexually harassed her in a hotel room while he was interviewing her. That time he was the editor of a newspaper.

On 10th April 2019, MJ Akbar filed a defamation case against Ramani in which he told the court that journalist Priya Ramani defamed him with the full knowledge that her actions will tarnish his reputation.

Following the allegations, Akbar has to step down from the position of Minister of State, External affairs.

On September 8 2020, The Rose Avenue Court in Delhi resumed the MJ Akbar’s defamation case. Senior Advocate Rebecca John, who is representing Priya Ramani told that the allegations made against Mr. Akbar are true and for the “public interest” rather than defamation.

While making her concluding arguments, today, John submitted that Priya Ramani did wrote an article for Vogue about sexual predators in work place in 2017, but it was not targeting Akbar alone.

A year later, after the #MeToo movement was raged in the country, Ramani revealed that how she was sexually harassed by her recruiter Mr. Akbar back in 1993.

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