ⓘ Featured Image: Baba Ramdev, file photo
Indian Medical Association (IMA), the apex medical body of India, on Thursday, filed a police complaint against yoga guru Swami Ramdev, more commonly known as Baba Ramdev – seeking an FIR over his “dishonest and wrongful representations” on allopathy.
In the complaint submitted at the IP Estate Police Station, Delhi, IMA said that Ramdev has “wilfully and deliberately spread false, baseless and malicious information” about treatment of Covid patients through established and approved methods and drugs.
On the course of the complaint against Ramdev, a senior police officer quoted,
“We have received the complaint and enquiry is being conducted,”
The IMA’s complaint dated May 9 said that Ramdev in order to leverage the advantage of the Covid situation, is putting dishonest and wrongful representations of allopathic medicines and other allied treatment techniques of modern medical science for the COVID-19 virus.
“In a video which has surfaced and is being shared widely throughout the social media, Swami Ramdev is seen wilfully and deliberately spreading false, baseless and malicious information with regard to the treatment of various patients suffering from COVID-19 by established and approved treatment methods and drugs,”
the complaint said.
The apex medical body also served a defamation notice on Ramdev for his misrepresentations and disparaging remarks against allopathy and allopathic practitioners, demanding an apology from him within 15 days, failing which it said it will demand a compensation of Rs 1,000 crore from the yoga guru.
The IMA had earlier written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding to book Ramdev immediately under sedition charges for alleged misinformation campaign on vaccination and challenging government protocols for treatment of COVID-19.
On Sunday, May 23, Ramdev was forced to withdraw a statement made in the viral video clip in which he is heard questioning some of the medicines being used to treat the coronavirus infection and saying that “lakhs have died from taking allopathic medicines for COVID-19”.
The remarks were met with vociferous protests from the doctors’ association, following which Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan asked him to withdraw the “extremely unfortunate” statement via his twitter handle.
Ramdev, who is also a co-founder of Patanjali Ayurveda, on Monday, May 24, Ramdev posed 25 questions to the IMA in an ‘open letter’ via his Twitter handle – asking if allopathy offered permanent relief for ailments such as hypertension and type-1 and 2 diabetes. The tweet said,
He went on to list modern-day ailments such as Parkinson’s disease and wondered if allopathy had any painless cure to treat infertility as well as to reverse ageing and increase hemoglobin.
Soon after, Ramdev’s close aide Acharya Balkrishna took to Twitter, saying the yoga guru and Ayurveda were being targeted by allopathic practitioners under the IMA as part of a conspiracy.
