An FIR has been registered against yoga guru Baba Ramdev and four others in Jaipur for allegedly conspiring to sell fake Ayurvedic medicine with the misleading claim to cure novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, following clinical trials on some patients, The Hindu reported.
The FIR was registered at Jyoti Nagar police station in Rajasthan’s capital on June 27 on the basis of a complaint made by some individuals, including a lawyer Balbir Jakhar, alleging that the claim had been made without getting the Ministry of AYUSH's approval.
The FIR names Acharya Balkrishna CEO of Ramdev-promoted Patanjali Ayurveda; Patanjali employee Anurag Varshney;, Balvir Singh Tomar and Anurag Singh Tomar, Chairman and Director, respectively, of the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (NIMS); and Baba Ramdev, the report said.
Baba Ramdev's herbal medicine company Patanjali Ayurved launched 'Coronil tablet and Swasari vati' medicines on June 23 claiming they can cure the highly contagious disease within seven days. It also claimed that the two Ayurveda-based medicines have shown 100 percent favourable results during clinical trials on COVID-19 infected patients, except those on a life support system.
However, the AYUSH ministry said the facts of the claim and details of the stated scientific study are not known to it.
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In the FIR, Jakhar said the accused had put the lives of common people at risk and neither the Centre nor the Rajasthan government had been informed about the clinical trials of ‘Coronil’, the report stated.
However, Patanjali Ayurveda had claimed that it had complied with all legal formalities, the report added.