Tanisha Rana
Published on: October 8, 2022 at 12:17 IST
The Karnataka High Court recently declined to quash a cheating case brought against a woman who stole money from a man she met on the dating app Tinder while posing as a wellness therapist.
The woman was plainly guilty of cheating, according to Justice M. Nagaprasanna, who concluded that the case had to proceed to trial.
“The conversations would show that the petitioner had initially claimed to be a wellness therapist and that the complainant would be taken care of by her staff, according to the talks.”
“Therefore, it is obvious that the website was made to entice the complainant and others like them without any team or qualifications. Therefore, there is strong evidence that the petitioner committed the crime of cheating.”
Relevantly, the Court urged the government to develop policies to control the rise of “pseudo-therapists” on social media who are not constrained by ethical standards.
“It is in public domain that there are huge mushrooming of so called therapies and therapists on social media i.e., Instagram, Twitter or Facebook as the case would be, wherein therapists pose themselves to be in the field of any therapy. It is also 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.
“Cases of this nature have begun to emerge in large proportions where people wanting to get some therapy fall prey to such pseudo-therapists. Therefore, it is time that the Government comes up with some regulatory measure to check the growth of such therapists.”
The complainant-man and the petitioner-woman met each other on Tinder.
When the man told the woman he was stressed out, she mentioned her Instagram profile, where she promoted overall wellness of the mind, body, and soul and claimed to be a wellness therapist.
The man took wellness treatment sessions on Instagram while COVID-19 was under lockdown, and he paid the woman about 3.15 lakh for each lesson.
When the man insisted on seeing the woman in person, things started to go south. He sent her filthy messages and pornographic material after she declined to do so, which led her to block him on social media.
The man then reported the woman to the authorities after discovering that she had 15 separate social media identities with the same services.
Following an investigation, the police filed a chargesheet against the woman under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and other sections of the Information and Technology (IT) Act for the offence of cheating.
She filed a motion with the High Court to stop the proceedings after becoming enraged at the same.
Before the High Court, the woman’s attorney claimed that the man had come to her for treatment himself and had only paid her the sum after being happy with the care.
It was alleged that the man only filed the complaint because the woman refused to comply with his indecent requests.
It was further argued that the complainant was bound by the agreement with the woman because he had signed the consent form.
On the other hand, the complainant’s attorney contended that the claim that a man approached the woman was completely false because the initial communication came from the woman, who pretended to be someone else by using the name “Rishta,” which was not her true identity.
In addition, he claimed that the woman deceived him out of more than 3 lakh by posing as a wellness therapist, luring him into treatment.
The Court stated that the petitioner cannot avoid legal consequences just because the man signed the consent form.
“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 order stated.
The Court ruled that a trial was required in order for the lady to be exonerated because she maintained multiple websites under various names and did not give the man her real name when leading the therapy sessions.
Separately, the Court acknowledged that the complainant had been charged with a different offence for sending indecent texts, which was still being adjudicated.
The woman who filed the case was represented by attorney Aman Correa, and the complainant was represented by attorneys KS Abhijita and S Diraviam Dinesh.
Case Title: Sanjana Fernades @ Raveera vs. State of Karnataka
