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Hyderabad, Jun 8: The city's Bathini Goud family has a cure for asthma: a fish which is gulped down by patients. Rationalists call it a fraud on lakhs of patients but the family says it's a divine prashad.

Science organizations have regularly demanded a scientific examination of the formulation, but the family refuses to disclose the contents. The medicine is administered during Mrigasira Karthi, a period considered right for the fish medicine to work.

The Nampally Exhibition Grounds in Hyderabad is packed with lakhs of people during this period and they get the medicine from the Bathini family. Disbelievers have tried get a court stay on the medicine, but the family a got a reprieve from the High Court.

This time about 10 lakh patients are expected to gather in the grounds in the next two days and the state government is making elaborate arrangements for them. "Many allopathic companies have lost their business because of us. In fact many of them have shut down, so they are making false allegations. Our prashad has a supreme power unlike English medicines," says Bathini Harinath Goud, fish medicine administrator.

The family claims asthma patients must take the medicine for four consecutive years, and people from all over the country have been doing just that. "I suffered from asthma for years but I am getting better know due to the medicine," says Dhaanabhai.

That’s all bogus, say rationalists and science forums. They have filed cases against the family. "He (Harinath Goud) administers drugs and gives prescriptions too as if he is a doctor. He can be charged under the Drugs and Medicines Magical Remedies Objectionable Advertisement Act 1954," says T V Rao General secretary, Jana Vignana Vedika.