Police file charge-sheet against acupuncture practitioner

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The city police prepared a chargesheet against an acupuncture practitioner who was arrested by the Central Crime Branch's (CCB) Women Protection Wing, on charges of sexual harassment during November last year.

Venkataramana, 57, running an acupuncture therapy clinic near Mathikere, was accused by a woman of filming videos of women patients who came to him for treatment. News Trail had reported the incident soon after his arrest on November 16, 2022.

Police sources said that investigating officers, with the help of a Forensic Lab team, retrieved at least 50 deleted objectionable videos of women from the mobile phone that the accused had been using. Police said that the ‘therapist’ Venkataraman alias Venkat had recorded videos of his patients in an undressed state during treatment.

"The duration of videos runs anywhere from 2-3 minutes to 10-12 minutes," the sources added. The accused was arrested based on a complaint by the mother of a 13-yearold girl. When the woman came to Venkat for treatment, he asked the woman to get undressed as it was "required for the treatment".

Since the woman was reluctant, he even showed a video of another 41-year-old woman in the nude at his clinic. The perplexed patient got in touch with the woman in the video and informed her about the incident. She filed a complaint with the police and also informed others who had gone to Venkat's clinic for therapy. The accused was later arrested from his hometown Gooty in Andhra Pradesh. He tried to evade arrest many times, even creating a fake accident, the police said.