Other New religious movements Guru-led movement or ashram Los Angeles, CA, USA · 2016

Bikram Choudhury: civil jury — 'malice, oppression and fraud'; $7.3M; left US

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The civil record concerns a yoga founder whose guru-like authority, teacher control, and institutional power were used to harass, retaliate, and conceal misconduct.

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Sources

Wikipedia (2026) 'Bikram Choudhury' [summarizing the Los Angeles civil verdict of January 2016]. Available at: en.wikipedia.org (Accessed: 15 July 2026).: Bikram Choudhury, founder of the Bikram yoga empire: 'On January 25, 2016, a jury awarded Jafa-Bodden $924,500 against Choudhury in actual damages, finding that Choudhury acted with malice, oppression and fraud. On January 26, 2016, the jury awarded Jafa-Bodden an additional $6.4 million in punitive damages.' Jafa-Bodden was his own head of legal, fired after refusing to cover up a rape investigation. He left the United States in 2016 with the judgment largely unpaid. Note: this is a civil jury verdict; the underlying sexual-assault allegations by students were never criminally adjudicated, and the later arrest warrant concerned nonpayment, not a criminal charge.
court reporting civil verdict Courthouse News Service, “Jury Hands Yoga Guru’s Ex-Lawyer $7.3 Million” (Jan. 27, 2016).: Contemporaneous court reporting records the Los Angeles jury’s compensatory and punitive awards and findings of malice, oppression, and fraud against Bikram Choudhury.

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Source and tier basis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikram_Choudhury Legacy citation preserved without a normalized source tier or evidentiary-role code. SHA-256 9433db80fe8a95afd9aeb4a2ab0c7c9f3d8298cd7089be6ccb6c9a21ad03147e
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.courthousenews.com/jury-hands-yoga-gurusex-lawyer-7-3-million/ Corpus classification: court-reporting; evidentiary role: civil-verdict. SHA-256 e4334eaf4991cd36330a5b99830679a9d50bafb5f2436a498efd9cb0559ed450
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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