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.
In the court of the Additional Chief Magistrate Vishal Pahuja (who has taken over the case from ACMM Samar Visha), Wahab gave a detailed account of the sexual and mental harassment that she was subjected to as a young journalist in Akbar’s The Asian Age newspaper.
Wahab had accused Akbar of sexual harassment and misconduct in the wake of the #MeToo movement last year, during which several women, including Priya Ramani, came out with their disclosures. Akbar denied all allegations and, in turn, filed the criminal defamation case against Ramani.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Akbar’s legal team interrupted Wahab’s testimony to establish the fact that the information she was giving was ‘irrelevant’.
His defense counsel raised objections to Wahab sharing her story in detail, citing Sections 6 and 9 of the Evidence Act, saying that she’s not the accused in the case but only a witness, so her statements can’t qualify as evidence.
But when Wahab began narrating her testimony again, there were reportedly chuckles and whispered laughter from the opposite side.
In September, when Priya Ramani was cross-questioned in court, many people had called out the line of questioning used by Akbar’s lawyers for being unseemly.
Each question was specifically designed to ask her to recall a specific date or the exact name of an article published years ago, going as far back as 25 years, in an apparent attempt to dent the credibility of her testimony.
This time too, social media has not taken kindly to his legal team’s tactics.
(This story was first published before the judge’s order and was updated subsequently.)
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