A Delhi district court has issued an order against the sale of a book on yoga guru Ramdev and its publisher, Juggernaut Books, said on Friday it has “complied with it immediately thereafter”.
The order also restrains the sale of Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev, which has been authored by journalist Priyanka Pathak-Narain, on e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Flipkart.
In a statement put on its blog on August 11, Juggernaut Books said they received a copy of the order on August 10, 2017.
“The order was passed ex-parte without hearing either the publisher, Juggernaut Books, or the author of the book, Priyanka Pathak-Narain, in order to avoid ‘the delay which would be caused during the process of serving the notice and hearing the defendants’,” read the statement.
Juggernaut Books said Godman to Tycoon was “a work of serious journalism” and they would stand by their book and defend the case in court.
“It is the product of over fifty interviews, many of them taped, with key players in Baba Ramdev’s life, including with Ramdev himself and close aides and family members. The book contains a detailed 25-page note on sources that lists the interviews, articles, police reports and RTI replies that are the basis of each chapter,” the publisher’s statement read.
{{/usCountry}}“It is the product of over fifty interviews, many of them taped, with key players in Baba Ramdev’s life, including with Ramdev himself and close aides and family members. The book contains a detailed 25-page note on sources that lists the interviews, articles, police reports and RTI replies that are the basis of each chapter,” the publisher’s statement read.
{{/usCountry}}Godman to Tycoon maps the yoga guru’s journey from Haridwar to setting up the Patanjali group, which is now India’s second-largest FMCG company.
The author also investigates his past, the controversies Ramdev has been involved in - such as the mysterious deaths of his two associates, Rajeev Dixit and Swami Yogananda - and certain claims made by Patanjali Ayurved.
HT tried to reach out to Baba Ramdev’s spokespersons, but they were unavailable for comments.