he launched Asian Age.in 1993. It used to come out
from Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and London. He presided
over the rise and fall of this newspaper. Now he has
been thrown out from the very newspaper he launched.

People close to him holds Congress President Sonia
Gandhi responsible for his removal. But Akbar’s
proximity with the BJP is a known fact. In 2004
parliamentary election he even campaigned for the then
external affairs minister, Yashwant Sinha, in
Hazaribagh.

Akbar, who became the youngest editor of the
Kolkata-based weekly magazine Sunday in mid-1970s was
out and out anti-BJP throughout his earlier years. He
shot into fame for his writings against the communal
riots in Jamshedpur, Meerut, Moradabad etc. He also
took stand against the BJP throughout the Ram
Janambhoomi movement years.

Today he is in the same BJP––the party against which
he stood so solidly for so many years.

Akbar, however, said: “I am independent, and will
remain independent. I, as a journalist, have many
friends in the politics. Why should I not have
political acquaintances and contacts?” “I am not going
to be defeated so easily”.

Whatever be Akbar’s claim the fact remained that he
was once a Congress loyalist, now strongly with the

BJP. And in his capacity as editor he had sacked
several journalists just for the sake of possessing
different viewpoints. One of them to be removed was
Soroor Ahmed, the then Special Correspondent of the
Asian Age in Patna, (and now a free-lance journalist
who contributes for BiharTimes.com too) a few days
after the accident of Rajdhani Express on September 9,
2002.