A 69-year-old prominent Indian-American yoga guru who founded an exercise routine practiced in hot rooms is facing six lawsuits filed by women, accusing him of sexual assault or rape at various locations, including in India. Bikram Choudhury the founder of Bikram’s Yoga College of India, is facing the lawsuits filed by six women with the latest case being filed in the los Angeles Supreme Court this month by a woman identified as Jill lawler, a Canadian.
In the suit, she is described as a bright, driven woman who fell in love with Bikram Yoga almost from her first class. She begged her parents to let her borrow money from her college fund to attend a gruelling nine-week teacher training, which cost US $10,000 at the time, CNN reported. She started the course in April 2010. The alleged abuse started soon after.
According to the lawsuit, it began with Choudhury trying to put his hand inside lawler’s pants, eventually escalating to rape, which continued for years, the report said. “She was ashamed, and embarrassed. She did not think that anyone would believe her and she was afraid that if Defendant Bikram Choudhury heard that she had told, that he would kick her out of training and she would have lost both the US $10,000 from her college fund and her ability to work as a yoga instructor in order to pay for college,” the suit reads.