Journalist Priya Ramani told a Delhi court that she had no "mala fide" and "extraneous" motive for making the allegations of sexual harassment against former-Union-minister MJ Akbar. Ms Ramani made the submissions before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vishal Pahuja while being cross examined by MJ Akbar's counsel in a criminal defamation complaint. She said her tweets accusing MJ Akbar were not "defamatory and malicious".

Delhi court asked senior journalist Priya Ramani, accused by former Union minister MJ Akbar of defamation, to appear before it on February-25. It issued a-summons-to her as-an-accused. Priya Ramani and other women have accused MJ Akbar of sexual-misconduct. In the wake of these allegations and during #MeToo uprising in India he resigned as a Union Minister of State for external affairs on October-17, 2018.

Pallavi Gogoi, former reporter at Asian Age and current Chief Business Editor at National Public Radio in New York, has accused former Union Minister M J Akbar of rape, repeated sexual-abuse, violent-behaviour. Over-a-dozen women have accused the editor-turned-politician and Rajya Sabha MP of sexual-harassment but Gogoi's account, published in the Washington Post, is the first to level serious allegations of rape against him.