What did the October 2024 press meet say about Isha Home School?
The claim
On 17 October 2024, at the Hyderabad Press Club, Yamini Ragani and her husband said their son had been sexually assaulted by another student at Isha Home School, that the school hid the correspondence, and that children were woken at 3 a.m. for a cold bath and made to meditate bare-chested.
The Hindu reported the notes, the WhatsApp replies, and the elite-family line. The South First added that she volunteered as a teacher until June 2024 to look for a pattern, that the school had no complaints committee until 9 October 2024, and that an email between two women, copied to an address she said was Sadhguru's, described the 3 a.m. practice and a reply of "ok to both."
What was answered
The school's own note of 19 October is a denial, not a point-by-point reply. It says she volunteered from 2022 to 2024, after her son had graduated, and was relieved because of complaints against her. It says the Tamil Nadu Commission for Protection of Child Rights had already studied the school and given a clean chit. That report is not attached here.
The point-by-point replies came from parents and from a later write-up. On 26 October 2024 a mother, Parimala, recorded that both her daughters were at the school, the younger then in grade 12, that she is not an Isha meditator, and that the allegations were false. She said safety was why the family chose the school, and that the press meet had made her daughters' friends a target of mockery. HinduPost, on 26 February 2025, said other Home School parents rejected the bare-chested claim as soon as it was made, and that former students have said the same.
On the assault, HinduPost's account is that this was an allegation between two students, that the other student was expelled within days of the school being told, that Yamini's son stayed on for another two or three years, and that she herself kept working at the school for two or three years after that, until she was relieved. A parent who believed the school was hiding an assault, and who then stayed on as a teacher for years, is the fact that breaks the later telling.
None of this is a criminal court judgment on the press meet. It is the record the parents and the school put out, against a press conference that did not produce the notes or the emails.
Still worth attaching: the child-rights commission report, and the Parimala recording's full transcript. Write to sadhguruallegations@gmail.com.
Sources
- The Hindu, 17 Oct 2024
- The South First, 18 Oct 2024
- Isha Home School statement
- Parimala, parent, 26 Oct 2024
- HinduPost, 26 Feb 2025