Divya Pharmacy, the company that produces Ramdev’s Patanjali products, has told regulatory authorities it will refrain from publishing advertisements for certain products for heart and liver disorders amid complaints that they breached drug laws.

The central ayush (ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha and homoeopathy) ministry had earlier this year asked Uttarakhand authorities to “take necessary action” against the company after receiving a complaint from a Kerala-based ophthalmologist, K.V. Babu, that the advertisements were illegal.

Babu had in February complained to the Centre’s apex drug regulatory authority that the Dehradun-based company had claimed in its advertisements that one of its products, Lipidom, reduces cholesterol “in a week” and protects people from “heart problems and blood pressure”.

The advertisements, Babu wrote, violated the Drug and Magic Remedies Act, which prohibits the advertisement of treatments for a range of health disorders, including “heart diseases” and “blood pressure”.

The Telegraph sent emails to Patanjali’s official address on April 20, when the Uttarakhand government sent a notice to the company after the Centre received Babu’s complaint, and on Saturday but did not receive any response.

Now, documents received by Babu under the Right to Information Act show that Divya Pharmacy, in response to a notice from the Uttarakhand ayurvedic and unani services department, had written back that it would stop the relevant advertisements.

“It is submitted that taking note of your captioned notice(s), the undersigned has immediately stopped publication of the impugned advertisements,” Divya Pharmacy wrote to the state authorities on May 7, according to documents Babu has received under RTI provisions.

The ayush ministry’s National Pharmacovigilance Centre too had independently noticed advertisements of other Patanjali products and issued similar directives to Karnataka and Rajasthan authorities.

Patanjali had advertised Livogrit and Livamrit as “evidence-based medicines” for “instant benefit in problems related to fatty liver, liver cirrhosis and the digestive system”.

The Drug and Magic Remedies Act also prohibits advertisements for the treatment of liver disorders.

A portal maintained by the Union department of consumer affairs to document grievances against misleading advertisements registered 1,416 such ads of ayush products and services between April 2014 and July 2021, the ayush ministry told Parliament earlier this year.

“People may purchase certain products after viewing misleading ads for them — and they may never know that they were misleading,” Babu said.

Between 2017 and 2019, the Advertising Standards Council of India had under a memorandum of understanding with the ayush ministry reported 1,229 misleading advertisements of ayush products, the ministry said.

A network of pharmacovigilance centres set up for ayush drugs across the country is mandated to monitor misleading advertisements and report them to state authorities.