The complaint was filed at Jyoti Nagar police station in Jaipur on Friday.
In another jolt to yoga guru Ramdev, an FIR has been lodged here against him, Patanjali Ayurved CEO Acharya Balkrishna and three others for allegedly making misleading claims that the herbal medicine company has found a cure for Covid-19 called Coronil.
Avnish Parashar, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), south, Jaipur, said: “Ramdev, Acharya Balkrishna, Balbir Singh Tomar, Anurag Tomar, and Anurag Varshney, were booked under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954, as per the FIR lodged by an advocate Balbir Jakhar.”
Four others – MD of Patanjali Ayurved Acharya Balkrishna, Director of National Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (NIMS), Jaipur, BS Tomar; his son Anurag Tomar, and senior scientist Anurag Varshney – have also been named in the FIR.
Advocate Jakhar said the accused have endangered the common people’s lives by making false claims of finding a COVID-19 vaccine as they neither informed the Rajasthan government nor the Centre about the clinical trials of Coronil.
Patanjali Ayurved, on Tuesday, introduced Coronil tablet and Swasarvati medicine claiming that they can cure COVID-19 within seven days.
Patanjali CEO Acharya Balkrishna on Thursday said that all procedures were followed to manufacture the medicine, Coronil, and they have not done anything wrong while obtaining the license.
However, the AYUSH ministry expressed unawareness about the development, and Patanjali was stopped from advertising the medicine within a few hours after its launch.
Patanjali earlier also claimed that the two Ayurveda-based medicines have shown 100 percent favorable results during clinical trials on COVID-19 patients except those on a life support system.
Haridwar-based Patanjali Ayurved on Tuesday launched “Coronil”, claiming it can cure COVID-19. It said the drug, when taken with another Patanjali product, had cured all coronavirus positive patients who took part in a trial within seven days. The trial, it said, was conducted in association with the NIMS, a Jaipur-based private institute. Hours after the launch of the drug, the AYUSH Ministry asked Patanjali Ayurved to provide details on the research leading up to it and its composition, telling the company to stop advertising it till the issue is examined.
The clinical trials were reportedly held in NIMS Jaipur.
While Ramdev claimed to make a thorough clinical case study on patients admitted at NIMS, its Chairman, B.S. Tomar on the other hand said, “No clinical trial in our hospital was made for the drug as there was no serious case of patients admitted. Only 100 asymptomatic patients in our hospital were given a few ayurvedic medicines under the Patanjali banner. We did not ask for medicine to cure coronavirus but had only these ayurvedic immunity boosters who helped the recovery of asymptomatic cases faster by 35 percent.”