Viewpoint: Priya Ramani’s acquittal & what it means for the #MeToo movement

A Delhi Court yesterday (February 17, 2021) acquitted journalist Priya Ramani in a defamation case filed by former Union Minister MJ Akbar. Ramani had accused Akbar of sexual harassment in 2018. In an article published by Vogue magazine, Ramani had narrated her ordeal with Akbar, who was her then boss and had called him a “sexual predator”. She had also named the former Minister in a tweet. Along with Ramani, there were several other women who had also named Akbar during the #MeToo movement raging across the country.

Akbar filed the criminal defamation case against Ramani in 2018 and since then it has been a long fight for the journalist against a powerful man. Therefore, the Delhi court’s ruling is being hailed as a landmark judgement and gives strength to cases being fought against sexual harassment in the workplace.

For long, women have been suffering in silence or quitting their jobs due to sexual harassment. The #MeToo movement saw women coming out in droves, mostly on social media, to speak out against sexual abuse faced in their lives at the hands of their seniors, colleagues, bosses. Some of these incidents went back to even 20 years or more.

Even with the Vishaka Guidelines in place, silence has more often than not been the only option for women in a system that is heavily skewed towards the male perpetrators in the workplace. No surprise then that the #MeToo movement was subdued.

But now, Ramani’s acquittal showcases why women need to speak up and be more vocal about their rights. They need not be intimidated by any threat of a criminal defamation case if they raise their voice against sexual abuse. It does not matter when the incident occurred. Most often women are hesitant due to the social stigma attached to such cases and do not speak up for several years.

As the Court observed, sexual abuse takes away the dignity and self-confidence of the victim, and hence, society too needs to understand the trauma suffered by women. Sexual abuse is a social problem and the victim shouldn’t feel isolated in such a situation.

The Court’s ruling, that “even a man of (high) social status can be a sexual harasser” and that his right of reputation cannot be at the cost of the right to dignity of the victim, is also important. With this, the Court hit out at people questioning the victim why there has been a delay in speaking up, or why she is using social media to narrate her ordeal, or that the person being accused of sexual misconduct is “reputed”. The Court said that in this case, Akbar “is not a man of a stellar reputation” and that so many women alleging sexual harassment at his hands is not a slander campaign against him.

The Court ruled that women can speak up whenever they are ready to speak up, regardless of when the incident took place, and she can choose any medium that she has access to in order to narrate her ordeal. The Delhi Court noted that Ramani had a witness to back her allegations, which was enough for the Court to believe her. What is important to note here is that the Court accepted Ramani’ defence, which The Quint explained as “the judge upheld the settled position of law that to prove any of the defences to a charge of defamation, the standard of proof is a ‘preponderance of probabilities’.” The Court also noted that often victims found it difficult to provide concrete proof in such cases as sexual abuse incidents mostly take place behind closed doors.

The Delhi Court’s judgement gives a big boost to the #MeToo movement in India. Victims of sexual abuse, who have been silent so far fearing social stigma or that they do not have any concrete evidence of the abuse, will perhaps feel confident enough to bring their perpetrators to book, regardless of when the incident took place or how powerful or reputable their abuser is. Of course, the fight will be a long – and often a lonely – one. But there is hope of getting justice and some form of closure at the end of it.