India's junior external affairs minister MJ Akbar has resigned amid accusations by 20 women of sexual harassment during his previous career as one of the country's most prominent news editors, becoming the most powerful man to fall in India's burgeoning #MeToo movement.
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Akbar said in a statement that he would "challenge false accusations" in a personal capacity, referring to a criminal defamation case he filed Monday against the first woman to accuse him.
Akbar, 67, first served as a lawmaker for India's then-ruling India National Congress party between 1989 and 1991. He then edited The Telegraph, The Asian Age and other newspapers and wrote several books of non-fiction, becoming one of the most influential people in the Indian news media.
He returned to public life in March 2014, when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and was appointed national spokesman during the 2014 election that brought the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power.
In India's deeply conservative society, the #MeToo movement began belatedly but has picked up steam in recent weeks.
Since September, Indian actresses and writers have flooded social media with allegations of sexual harassment and assault by their superiors and colleagues.
The string of accusations against Akbar began when journalist Priya Ramani identified him on Twitter on October 8 as the unnamed editor that she had described in a story about newsroom sexual harassment published in Vogue last year.
Other women in media have alleged that Akbar interviewed job candidates in hotel rooms at night; groped, massaged and forcibly kissed young interns and employees; and offered young women choice out-of-town postings so that he could go visit them there.
On Sunday, returning from an official visit to West Africa, Akbar denied the allegations as "false, baseless and wild."
He then filed a defamation case against Ramani and released a statement in which he questioned his accusers' motives.
"Why has this storm risen a few months before a general election?" he asked.
Modi is hoping to remain in power in elections due early next year.
On Tuesday, 20 women signed a statement asking the court hearing Akbar's defamation case against Ramani to allow them to give their own testimonies against him.
The case was filed in a New Delhi court, which is expected to hold a hearing on it Thursday. If convicted of criminal defamation, she could be jailed up to two years.
Australian Associated Press