Haridwar court summon to Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna in false ads case

Haridwar: The court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Rahul Kumar Shrivastav in Haridwar on Friday summoned yoga guru Ramdev and his associate, Acharya Balkrishna for the second time in 25 days, for failing to appear before the court in the misleading Patanjali ads case.

The Supreme Court (SC) had earlier reprimanded the Ayurveda and Unani Department of the Uttarakhand government for not taking action against the misleading advertisements after which the licensing authority had suspended the licenses of 14 of Ramdev’s products and banned them.

Besides, the District Ayurvedic and Unani Officer had also filed a case against Divya Pharmacy and Patanjali Ayurveda Limited regarding this matter with the CJM. With Ramdev and Balkrishna not appearing despite summons, the court has now ordered a fresh summon and fixed the date of the next hearing on June 7.

Assistant Prosecution Officer Devmani Pandey said that summons have been issued again to Ramdev and Balkrishna to appear in the court along with a copy of the complaint letter.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has also filed a petition on this matter regarding which hearing is underway in the SC. IMA has argued that Patanjali has been making misleading claims of treating certain diseases with Ayurvedic medicines.

These claims are in direct violation of the Drugs and Other Magic Remedies Act 1954 and the Consumer Protection Act 2019, the IMA claimed. The top court also said celebrities, social media influencers, and others who endorse products “are equally responsible” for misleading advertisements.

In one of the hearings, the contemnors had promised to publicly apologise in the media following which a public apology was published in 67 newspapers. “But is your apology the same size as the advertisements you normally issue in newspapers? Did it not cost you ‘tens of lakhs’ to put front-page advertisements?” the court had asked Ramdev’s lawyer.