A court in Delhi on Wednesday ruled that journalist Priya Ramani was not guilty of defaming former Union minister MJ Akbar. Ramani had in 2018 accused Akbar of sexual harassment in 1993 when he was editor of the Asian Age newspaper.
Akbar denied the charges but stepped down from his position as Minister of State for External Affairs.
After Ramani’s allegation, 20 other women came forward to allege that that Akbar had sexually harassed them when he was an editor.
The Delhi court said that Ramani’s accusations were made in the “interest of anti-sexual harassment at workplace”.
Here is how cartoonists celebrated the decision.
The day before the decision, the cartoonist Ponnappa had proved prescient when he invoked the #MeToo movement in a panel referring to the arrest of environmental activist Disha Ravi for allegedly being involved in preparing a “toolkit” – a campaign information document – about the farmers protests on Delhi’s borders.
The authorities claim, without much evidence, that the document was part of a conspiracy to “economic, social, cultural, and regional war against India”.
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