NEW DELHI – A court in New Delhi absolved an Indian journalist of defamation on Wednesday after she accused MJ Akbar, a prominent former government minister and newspaper editor, of sexual harassment in a dispute widely viewed as a barometer of the the country’s #MeToo fledgling movement.
Mr. Akbar accused journalist Priya Ramani of criminal defamation after she made her allegations. But the court concluded that Akbar was unable to prove his case, saying Ramani’s allegations were in the interest of preventing sexual harassment in the workplace.
The court said in its order that “the right to reputation cannot be protected at the expense of the right to dignity”.
Mr. Akbar has an opportunity to appeal.
If Ms. Ramani had been found guilty of defamation, she could have been jailed for up to two years, fined or both. Under Indian law, individuals can file criminal defamation claims in the courts, although the legal standard is higher than for civil defamation cases.
Even though Ramani was acquitted, experts say the defamation case can still have a frightening effect among women seeking to come forward to complain about harassment and violence at the hands of powerful men. Akbar, a member of India’s Parliament, assembled a team of nearly 100 lawyers to file his libel claim against Ramani.
Akbar, who founded and edited several newspapers and magazines before switching to politics, has been the most prominent figure in Indian public life to face widespread accusations of sexual harassment amid the rise of the #MeToo movement. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, and was part of the team that helped bring Modi to power in the 2014 elections in India.
He resigned as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in 2018 after Ramani’s allegations of sexual harassment prompted 20 other women to sign a letter on similar charges. Mr. Akbar denied all of the women’s claims.
Ramani’s accusations focused on Akbar’s tenure at The Asian Age, the newspaper he founded in the early 1990s.
In October 2017, she wrote an article for Vogue India in which she described an uncomfortable meeting in a hotel room with a senior editor during a job interview, more than 20 years earlier. She described him as a legend in the news industry, but did not include his name.
A year later, in October 2018, when the #MeToo movement swept Indian social media, with Bollywood stars and journalists speaking out, Ramani tweeted a link to Vogue’s story, this time identifying Akbar, then junior foreign minister in Mr. Modi’s office.
“Many women have worse stories about this predator,” she wrote. “Maybe they will share.”
In just a few days, nearly a dozen journalists made allegations ranging from harassment to rape by Mr. Akbar during his tenure as senior editor of several Indian publications. By the end of the month, 21 journalists had published their complaints. They said Akbar used his position as a senior editor to harass and intimidate them, especially young women beginning their careers in journalism.
Akbar resigned amid the allegations, but filed a defamation suit against Ramani the following day. Since then, Ms. Ramani has disabled her Twitter account. Akbar said the disabling is tantamount to tampering with evidence.
At a September hearing, Ramani said his allegations were not defamation because they were true and in the public interest.
Akbar did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Wednesday. Ms. Ramani said she could not discuss the case until a verdict was reached.
“I spoke because the women before me spoke,” she said at a literature festival in 2019. “I spoke so that people after me could speak.”