The Jaipur police on Friday filed a first information report against yoga guru Ramdev, Patanjali Chief Executive Officer Acharya Balkrishna and three others for making misleading claims about finding a cure for the coronavirus, Live Law reported.
The three others were identified as Balbir Tomar, Anurag Tomar and Anurag Varshney. They were booked on the basis of a complaint filed by a Balbir Jhakar, said Jaipur Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Avnish Parashar, according to the Hindustan Times.
Balbir Singh Tomar and Anurag Tomar are the chairperson and the director, respectively, of the National Institute of Medical Science, Jaipur. Meanwhile, Varshney is a scientist at Patanjali Ayurved. All of them were charged under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, which pertains to cheating, and other relevant sections of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954, Parashar said.
Jhakar, who is an advocate, said he filed the complaint because Ramdev and his aides have put the life of common people at risk. “Neither the Rajasthan government nor the Centre was informed about the clinical trials about Coronil,” he added.
Ramdev, while launching his herbal preparation, on Tuesday had claimed the “medicines”, named Coronil and Swasari, showed 100% favourable results during clinical trials on affected patients at Patanjali Yogpeeth in Haridwar, the yoga guru said at a press conference in the town. He added that his company took all the required permissions from the production stage to its clinical trials.
However, the licence officer of Uttarakhand Ayurved department claimed that Patanjali never disclosed that its new medicine kit was for coronavirus when it applied for a license. The officer said the herbal products company sought a license for an “immunity booster and a cough and fever cure”. The Uttarakhand government will serve a notice to Ramdev’s company for advertising its preparations as a cure for the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, a petitioner has moved a court calling for a first information report against Ramdev and his company’s Chief Executive Officer Acharya Balkrishna. The plea said that the two had allegedly put the lives of people at risk by claiming to have come up with a cure for Covid-19. The case will be heard on June 30. In Maharashtra, Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had on Thursday warned the yoga guru that the state will not allow the sale of his “spurious medicines”.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy, or AYUSH, asked the company to stop advertising its preparation as a cure for the coronavirus. It was also asked to provide details of its preparation. Later on the same day, Ramdev said that his company had taken all the required permissions from the production stage to its clinical trials.
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