It is time the government comes out with some regulatory measure to check the growth of online therapies and therapists as they are mushrooming on social media like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc., said the High Court of Karnataka.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna made these observations while dismissing a petition filed by a 28-year-old “wellness therapist” questioning the chargesheet filed against her by the police based on a complaint of cheating lodged by a 36-year-old man.
The petitioner, Sanjana, and the complainant, Shankar, got acquainted through a dating app, Tinder, when the country was facing severe COVID-19 pandemic. As the complainant, during a chat with her on a night, expressed stress, she offered him “therapy” by inviting him to her Instagram page — “positivity-for-a-360-life” — while claiming that she is a “wellness therapist” and sent him a message with the name “Rishta”, which is not her name.
The complainant, who had transferred to her ₹3.15 lakh, had levelled charges of cheating on her by complaining that she was operating at least 15 such fake profiles on Instagram and other social media platforms under different pseudo names.
He had started verifying her claims after she declined his request to meet her, resulting in him allegedly sending lewd messages to her due to which she blocked his account. Later, she also lodged a complaint against him with the police for sending lewd messages.
No ethics or regulated
The court observed, “It is in public domain that they are all pseudo-therapists who are ‘Instagram influencers’. The present case concerns psychosomatic therapy or the wellness therapy. Therapists of the kind are many in number on social media. In reality, they are not bound by any ethics or not regulated by any norms,” the court observed.
The court noted that ingredients of the chargesheet clearly make out a case of cheating against the petitioner as without having any team or any qualification whatsoever, the petitioner had created a web page p rima facie to lure the complainant and the like.
The chats reveal that the petitioner had initially posed that she is a “wellness therapist” and her team would take care of the complainant, the court noted, while also pointing out that she had several such web pages in different names.
“There is no document or rather is an admitted fact that the petitioner has no qualification to be in the field of any kind of wellness therapy as projected. It is her own generated web page, without any qualification. Therefore it is a case where the petitioner without any substance or qualification lured the customers into the web of wellness therapy through the web page,” the court observed.
Consent form
Interestingly, the consent form to which the complainant had signed stated that, “The content or information shared within a counselling season is by no means admissible as a government document or in the court of law or as any medium-bases evidence, should there be a summon.” However, court said it does not mean that the petitioner can escape the clutches of law.
