Recent times has witnessed the meteoric rise of pseudo-therapists and ‘Instagram influencers’ who are not bound by ethics or not regulated by norms and many people fall prey to such therapists online.
To curb the same, the Karnataka High Court has advised the government to come up with some regulatory measures to check their growth.
Recently, the court rejected the petition of one such ‘influencer’ who sought to quash a criminal case against her. The High Court had said in a September 2 judgement: Therapists of this kind are many on the social media. They are not bound by ethics or not regulated by norms. Cases of this nature have begun to emerge in large proportion wherein people wanting to get therapy fall prey to pseudo-therapists.
The court said that “In public domain, there is a huge number of such therapists. On the social media, therapists pose as if they are in the field of therapy. It is also in public domain that they are pseudo-therapists who are Instagram influencers”.
IT Professional Poses As Wellness Coach, Sued for Cheating
There was a complaint was filed against Sanjana Fernandes aka Raveera, a 28-year-old resident of Bengaluru, by Shankar Ganesh PJ.
She moved to the court and the case is now pending before a Magistrate Court in which she has been accused of offences of cheating under the Indian Penal Code and various sections of the Information Technology Act.
As per the prosecution, Raveera, who works in IT, accosted Shankar Ganesh on a dating app and after realizing that he was under stress, asked him to follow her Instagram page ‘Positive For A 360 Life’.
She posed herself as a wellness therapist and after attending her online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic, the complainant transferred around Rs 3.15 lakh to her.
Ganesh, keen on meeting her, texted her only to be blocked by her and to discover that she had 15 profiles on Instagram and other social media platforms.
He then filed a case against her. To counter him, Raveera said that he sent her lewd messages and dirty requests, and when she tried to resist the requests, she was roped in against false complaint.
The Court Dismissed The Petition
The court noted that the claims made by the accused about the therapy were unfounded. It is her own-generated web page, without any qualification. Therefore, it is a case wherein the petitioner without any substance or qualification lured customers into the web of wellness therapy through the web page.
The court said that the “chats will reveal that the petitioner had initially represented herself as a wellness therapist and that her team will take care of the complainant”.
Since she did not have any team or any qualification, the web page was created to lure the complainant and the like.
The court said she had filed a case against Ganesh for the lewd messages which was also pending.
Dismissing her petition, the High Court, in its judgement on September 2, said, I do not find any warrant to interfere with the case on hand as the petitioner has not demonstrated by production of such unimpeachable evidence of sterling character for this court to interfere or interject the proceedings.
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