The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has served a Rs 1,000 crore defamation notice to yoga guru Ramdev for his disparaging remarks against allopathy and allopathic doctors. The IMA has demanded an apology from him within 15 days, failing which it said it will demand compensation of Rs 1,000 crore from the yoga guru. The six-page notice served on behalf of IMA (Uttarakhand) secretary Ajay Khanna by his lawyer Neeraj Pandey describes the remarks by Ramdev as damaging to the reputation and the image of allopathy and around 2,000 practitioners of it who are part of the association.
Terming the remarks of the yoga guru a "criminal act" under Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code, the notice demanded a written apology from him within 15 days of its receipt, or else a compensation of Rs 1,000 crore will be demanded from him at the rate of Rs 50 lakh per member of the IMA. The notice has also asked Ramdev to make a video clip contradicting all his false and defamatory allegations, and circulate it on all the social media platforms where he had uploaded his earlier video clip levelling the allegations.
It has also asked the yoga guru to withdraw a "misleading" advertisement from all platforms endorsing "Coronil kit" a product of his firm, as an effective medicine for COVID-19, failing which an FIR and a criminal case will be lodged against him by the IMA.
Citing a video circulating on social media, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) had on May 22 said Ramdev claimed that modern medicine (allopathy) is a "stupid science". He also allegedly said medicines such as remdesivir, fabiflu and other drugs approved by the Drugs Controller General of India have failed to treat COVID-19 and "lakhs of patients have died after taking allopathic medicines." The IMA had demanded the Union government to take strict action against Ramdev for allegedly misleading people by making "unlearned" comments and describing modern medicine as "stupid science.”
A day later, after Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan called his remarks unfortunate and asked him to take them back, Ramdev was forced to withdraw his unscientific statement and claimed that in the video, he was reading out messages forwarded on WhatsApp. Smarting over the same, the yoga guru then sent a series of questions to the Indian Medical Association (IMA) if allopathy “offered permanent relief” for ailments such as hypertension and diabetes.
(With PTI inputs)