‘Healer’ held for promoting unassisted childbirth at home

The arrest comes after flex boards publicising a one-day free session on conducting natural birth without doctors’ assistance and medicines were installed by Bhaskaran.

“You can give birth naturally at home without visiting a doctor, medicine, vaccine, scans and blood tests,” says the flex boards put up by Baskar. Notices were also issued inviting public for the training programme. 

This campaign for ‘naturopathic delivery’ came as a shock to the Health department officials as just recently a young woman from Tirupur died of excessive bleeding 

while trying to deliver at home by watching similar methods on YouTube. 

Based on a complaint from Deputy Director of Health Services G Banumathi, the city police registered a case and arrested Baskar along with his office manager Srinivasan (32) on Thursday evening. 

“While the state government has been making strenuous efforts to bring down the maternal mortality rate, promoting such form of child birth may prove dangerous for both child and the mother. Action will be initiated against Baskar after a police inquiry,” she said to media. 

Though the advertisement for the one-day training programme was claimed to be free, the organisers had charged money from each participant as consultation fee. 

Police booked Baskar under IPC section 420 for cheating and section 511 IPC for attempting to commit offences. Baskar is running NISTAI International Life Style Training Centre at Kovaipudur and has been famous for his self-styled healing sessions across Tamil Nadu.