The Supreme Court on Tuesday closed contempt proceedings against yoga guru Ramdev, Patanjali Ayurved and the company’s Managing Director Balkrishna in a case about misleading advertisements, Bar and Bench reported.
The bench of Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah pronounced the judgement. The company and its founders had sought pardon from the court for the breach.
The court had been hearing a petition filed by the Indian Medical Association against Patanjali Ayurved Limited accusing the company of carrying out a “smear campaign” against modern medicine and the Covid-19 vaccination drive.
Accepting their unconditional apology, the two-judge bench said that while the initial actions before the apology violated the undertakings given to the court, they have since made efforts to rectify their mistake, The Indian Express reported.
Kohli said: “This was not only by expressing regret for their conduct on affidavit and in person, but also by taking steps to publicise the apology tendered by them through advertisements, published prominently in national and regional newspapers,”
The bench said that while the “wisdom of tendering an unconditional apology dawned belatedly” on Ramdev, Acharya and the company after the court rejected their first attempt to offer a qualified apology, “their subsequent conduct demonstrates that they have made sincere efforts to purge themselves”.
The court said that given these efforts, it was accepting the apology and closing the matter.
The court also cautioned them to “strictly abide by the terms of their undertakings”, the newspaper reported. Violation of the court order in the future “shall be [dealt with] strictly, and the ensuing consequences could indeed be grave”, it added.
In April, the court reprimanded Ramdev and Balkrishna for an advertisement issued by their company on December 4 after it had said in an undertaking on November 21 that it would not make any “casual statements claiming medicinal efficacy or against any system of medicine”.
In November, the court had warned that it could impose a cost of Rs 1 crore per false claim made in each advertisement claiming that the company’s products can cure diseases.
After the court’s reprimand on April 16, Patanjali Ayurved apologised for the “mistake of publishing advertisements and holding a press conference” even after it assured the court that it would cease to promote products with dubious claims.
Earlier on April 10, the court had rejected Patanjali’s second apology and said that Balkrishna and Ramdev only expressed remorse when they were “caught on the wrong foot”.
In a subsequent hearing on April 12, the court said that it was concerned about companies deceiving customers and creating risks to their health. The bench said that public health suffers because of such products despite the large sums of money they cost.
The petitioner in the case, Indian Medical Association chief RV Asokan, has also been directed by the Supreme Court to publish an apology in prominent newspapers for his remarks about the proceedings in the contempt case against Patanjali Ayurved.
Also read: A brief history of Patanjali’s dangerous claims