After facing criticism on social media for her team ‘giggling’ and ‘laughing’, Akbar’s lawyer today approached the judge to appraise him about certain ‘personal remarks’ that had been made about them in media reports.
The judge, in turn, asked the media to stay away from making ‘personal remarks’ about the counsels, without specifying what ‘personal’ meant.
Prior to this direction by the judge, The Quint had already reported on the events in court and on the reactions of public figures on Twitter as follows:
Senior journalist Ghazala Wahab, on Wednesday, 11 December, recounted in front of a full courtroom how she was allegedly molested by former Union Minister MJ Akbar. The case being heard is the defamation suit Akbar filed against another senior journalist, Priya Ramani, for accusing him of sexual harassment at the height of the #MeToo movement.
But the former Union Minister’s legal team came in for the wrong kind of attention, yet again – social media users were quick to criticise his legal team for their behaviour in court, which reportedly included giggling audibly and whispering as Wahab was recalling details of how Akbar had allegedly molested her while he was her boss. Twitter took a dim view of Akbar’s team using these methods to shake the witness during her testimony.