Women have gone through hell: Mumbai teacher who testified against star yoga guru Bikram

Late-night massage sessions, inappropriate groping, abusive language and rape: three years after women from the US and Canada began levelling a range of sexual harassment charges against “hot yoga” founder Bikram Choudhury, the celebrity yoga guru is being made to pay – quite literally so far.

Between Monday and Tuesday, a court in Los Angeles asked 70-year-old Choudhury to pay up to $7.5 million as punitive and compensatory damages to Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, one of at least seven women who have filed sexual harassment lawsuits against the yoga instructor since 2013. While one of the other complainants has reached a conditional settlement in her case, five more harassment cases are pending in various Los Angeles courts.

Jafa-Bodden, who worked as a legal analyst for Choudhury’s yoga empire, alleged in her lawsuit that Choudhury often called her for meetings in his bedroom, asked her to join him in bed on one occasion, simulated oral sex with his hands and eventually fired her when she began looking into other sexual harassment and rape charges against him.

Her victory in the case this week – a significant blow to Choudhury’s bank balance and reputation – was propelled by the testimonies of at least 70 other women who came forward to serve as witnesses and share their own stories. One of them is Mandeep Kaur Sandhu, a yoga teacher who runs her own yoga institute in Mumbai.

‘He never asked male students to massage him’

Bikram Choudhury, who had his origins in Kolkata before he moved to the US, runs an empire of more than 650 hot yoga studios around the world. This brand of yoga involves exercising in a humid, pre-heated room, and Choudhury has taught it to a range of celebrities that include Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney, David Beckham and Madonna.

In 2009, Mandeep Kaur Sandhu – already an established yoga teacher in India – signed up for Choudhury’s popular two-month teacher training course in Los Angeles. “Bikram doesn’t really teach the course directly – other instructors do the teaching while he mainly gives lectures,” said Sandhu, who paid a hefty Rs 10 lakh for the course.

During these lectures, Choudhury often called women “bitches” or other abusive names, but that is the mildest of the complaints that Sandhu and other women have against him. “He made it compulsory for everyone to watch movies in a big tent late at night,” said Sandhu. “During the screenings, he would sit on a big sofa and in the darkness, call different girls to sit with him, comb his hair and massage him. And I never saw him ask a male student to do that.”

Sandhu, too, was asked to massage Choudhury several times, but on one occasion, she claims, he asked her to massage his private parts. Sandhu refused, and chose to report the incident to Choudhury’s niece, the manager of the course. “I wanted my money back and I wanted to go back home, but his niece merely told me it was a misunderstanding, that it would not happen again,” she said.

Sandhu reluctantly completed the course, but had to endure rumours maligning her character and at one point, repeated calls from Choudhury’s wife and niece asking her to massage them too. “The whole family was trying to cover up the incident.”

‘Women have gone through hell’

As a single mother with a 4-year-old son back at home, Sandhu chose to return to India soon after her course, and set up her own yoga school in 2013. It was only then that several other women, one by one, began to file lawsuits against Choudhury.

“Lots of women have gone through hell because of him, but earlier, everyone felt like they were the only ones facing harassment and didn’t speak out,” she said.

Sandhu’s decision to sign up as a witness in Jafa-Bodden’s case – and now speak out in the media as well – has required tremendous courage. “My father has been quite upset, because in India, when women speak about these things, parents are worried about the be-izzati [loss of honour] it will bring,” she said. “But I am ready to speak now and I’m proud of it.”