#MeToo: US journalist hits back at MJ Akbar over ‘consensual’ claims

US-based journalist Pallavi Gogoi has dismissed MJ Akbar’s claims of “consensual relationship”, adding that a relationship based on “coercion and abuse of power” is not consensual.

Gogoi took to Twitter on Saturday to reiterate her stance she took in her piece for the Washington Post.

She is presently working as the chief business editor of National Public Radio (NPR), a Washington-based American media organisation.

The journalist said that she would continue to speak her truth “so that other women, who have been sexually assaulted by him, know it is okay for them to come forward and speak their truth too.”

67-year-old Akbar, who is facing allegations of sexual assault and rape by multiple women, on Friday denied accusations of rape by Gogoi who, in her article, recounted the “most painful memories” of her life and said she was in “shreds — emotionally, physically, mentally”. The minister recently resigned as junior foreign minister following a spate of sexual harassment allegations in the wake of #MeToo movement. Gogoi’s account is the first to level serious allegations of rape against him.

Akbar in a statement had said: “Somewhere around 1994, Ms Pallavi Gogoi and I entered into a consensual relationship that spanned several months”. “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.”

Mallika Akbar, his wife, also dismissed Gogoi’s accusations, made in a Washington Post article Friday, as a “lie”, in a separate statement.