Days after the Union Minister MJ Akbar refuted allegations against him as false, fabricated and deeply distressing, another woman journalist has accused him of sexual harassment.

Multiple women in the last few days have come out with accounts of alleged sexual harassment by Akbar when he was a journalist as the #MeToo movement swept social media, bringing to fore sordid tales of sexual harassment by influential men in different walks of life.

The fresh allegation comes amid mounting demands for Akbar's removal from the Union council of ministers.

A woman who worked with Akbar has narrated her incidents in an article written in scroll.in under the title — "MJ Akbar, stop with the lying. You sexually harassed me too. Your threats will not silence us."

In an open letter, the victim wrote that while she was a trainee in the Telegraph in 1992, a day after meeting him, Akbar started calling her incessantly, asking her to come and meet him at his hotel, always under a thin veil of some work-related discussion.

However, when she went to meet Akbar, she wrote, "You opened the door dressed only in your underwear. I stood at the door, stricken, scared and awkward. You stood there like the VIP man, amused by my fear. I did go in and carried on blabbering out of fear till you finally put on a bathrobe." 

She further wrote that she joined Deccan Chronicle and Akbar was the editor-in-chief of the paper. She alleges that Akbar summoned her to discuss pages and when she reached his room, he started yelling at her about being late and when she tried to mumble some words, suddenly Akbar got up, grabbed her and kissed her hard.

"I wriggled out and ran till I reached the road, jumped into an auto rickshaw and started crying," she wrote.

She further alleged, the next day, she tried to avoid Akbar, but he this time he summoned her to the conference room, where he again grabbed and kissed her.

"Defeated, humiliated, blinded by hurt and tears, I stayed in that room till I stopped crying. I waited till you had left the building, went to the bathroom, washed my face and carried on to finish my page," she wrote in the scroll.in.

After returning from a tour of Africa, defending himself, Akbar had said, "Accusation without evidence has become a viral fever among some sections. Whatever be the case, now that I have returned, my lawyers will look into these wild and baseless allegations in order to decide our future course of legal action."

Akbar also said the "false, baseless and wild allegations have caused irreparable damage" to his reputation and wondered why "this storm has risen" a few months before the general election?. "Lies do not have legs, but they do contain poison, which can be whipped into a frenzy. This is deeply distressing. As indicated above, I will be taking appropriate legal action," he said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has maintained a studied silence on the matter so far.