Meet Nish The Fish

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Is it Hindu Spirituality for Women? Or A Nitrous-Fueled LA Sex “Cult”?

By Jack Ludkey · August 17, 2026 · 10 min read

A DM arrived from the schizophrenic that’s been sending me bible passages for months. Every time I posted a story of a line of coke on my first edition copy of Gone Girl he’d DM me some Kumbaya bullshit. But this time the guy had a hot tip on an allegedly satanic Indian cult leader fueled by nitrous and chicken blood.

From the schizo DMer and others, I was told the following: On July 27th, a woman named Ruma Poudell went missing in Seattle. She had spent the week in the company of Nishanth Selvalingam, known by his moniker Nish the Fish. A yoga teacher, podcaster, and spiritual guru with a small cult following, Nish identifies with the “left-hand path” (Vāmācāra) of Tantra, an esoteric tradition, akin to Satanism, that seeks spiritual transcendence through the deliberate transgression of social and religious taboos. It has historically involved ritualized sex, drugs, blood smearing, assembling in graveyards…you get the idea. Nish is a disciple of Kali Ma, a Hindu Goddess, yes, from The Temple of Doom.

Nish’s former female followers recently spoke out with Nish present in a four hour “Accountability Forum,” the details of which are referenced throughout this piece. They claimed that Nish is a sexual predator and a fraud.

Nish also claims to be a follower of the Hindu goddess Mahakali. According to an ex of his, Nish’s practice involves “blood sacrifice.” She says he uses chickens' blood mixed with his own blood to cast spells on enemies. Another ex-lover told me he owns a real human skull, and claimed to have used blood magic to trap a demon inside of it in order to bolster his image as an Aghori, a Hindu necromancer. According to Wikipedia, some Aghoris smear cremated ashes on themselves and eat flesh from foraged human corpses.

Nish's more friendly online content consists of extremely long, rambling lectures, usually over three hours in length. He covers topics like "Chinnamasta and How to Actually Make Love," "How to Not Be a Cult," and "Why I Love Women Who Lie."

The four-hour Accountability Forum video between Nish and his accusers outlines the following story: A few weeks ago, Nish took Ruma from Los Angeles to Portland for one of Nish’s "retreats," drug fueled benders involving nitrous and psychedelics. Ruma traveled from Portland to Seattle in a van with Nish’s yogis, reportedly in a concerning mental state. Many on the retreat believed her to be possessed and urged her not to join them on the next leg of the journey to Seattle. Nish brought her anyway. They arrived at a retreat facility, where staff quickly kicked them out for leaving nitrous canisters everywhere and generally trashing the place. They camped in a public park. Ruma ran around at night screaming. Nish later claimed, in another video, to have begun an exorcism of Ruma. At some point she disappeared into the night without any of her things.

In the lead up to the “retreat,” Ruma (pictured below) had allegedly spent two weeks at Nish’s apartment taking copious amounts of psychedelics.

This incident led to the four hour Accountability Forum, a public debate where various hippie women took turns yelling at Nish and accusing him of sexual misconduct. In the profile photo for the video he is with the two women, Ruma and Cristy, and a third woman, Asha, who is allegedly with him now in Los Angeles.

The source alleges that only one of the yogis expressed concern that Ruma had disappeared. The others said they felt she was a demon. Nish mentioned that he had spoken to Ruma’s parents, who were convinced she was dead. When pressed about his interaction with Ruma’s parents, he explained:

"I did admit that she had done psychedelics, but I wasn't trying to let her family know that. I didn't want her family to know that we were just sleeping in a park, that we aren't a real organization, that we didn't have a Mundir (monastery) — this is just my apartment. So it's true, I did actively deceive Ruma's family, but it was to protect her. I didn't want her mom to know I was a 30 year old guy on the internet making content." (127:20)

While Ruma was missing, Nish posted a video “galavanting” with a new woman, Asha.

In a screenshot posted on Instagram, one of the former followers shared an image of Nish allegedly officiating Asha’s wedding to someone else a year prior. This video is archived on the “Exposing Nish” tab on the instagram profile of Ruby Magdalene Wolf. Ruby is another Yogi influencer and ex-student/lover of Nish who has publicly accused him of predatory and cultish practices.

Another woman from the Accountability Forum chimed in: "It disgusts me that Nish cuts up his cocaine on a picture of [Hindu Goddess] Kali Ma that he keeps in his wallet." (3:12:10)

Ruma’s disappearance became the boiling point for Nish and his broader community. On Nish’s subreddit, r/ExperiencesWithNish, multiple students alleged that he required sleeping with him in order to experience a Kali initiation. They also mention the heavy nitrous and psychedelic use.

Reddit locked the subreddit, with many anonymous users banned for doxxing those who have spoken out. Nish also shut down the Discord server after past followers started accusing him of raping a girl at a house party in Arizona. A user wrote, “WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT NISH HAVING TO GIVE A SEMEN SAMPLE IN PHOENIX, AZ AFTER OFFICIAL COURT R-R-R-R-RAPE ALLEGATIONS FOR ‘SUPPOSEDLY’ FALLING ASLEEP IN A TRAP HOUSE?...”

Nish categorically denies the accusation, claiming no police report was ever filed. His full response is reproduced at the end of this piece, and we were unable to find any arrest records related to the event.

"If you want me to stop bringing psychotic people to retreats, I won't," Nish rants into the front-facing camera, responding to the blowback.

After 48 hours as a missing person, a social worker found Ruma in Seattle and sent her back to her family. Ruma then posted a video saying she voluntarily institutionalized herself. This makes Ruma the second woman supposedly institutionalized after an experience with Nish. Another girl, Cristy, who stayed with Nish in May and was in his profile photo, started a gofundme to help put her life back together after Nish “financially drained her.” There is a petition to have Nish investigated, organized by some ex-students, all of whom are women.

Nish still denies having sex with either Ruma or Cristy, although one of the yogis in the Accountability Forum claimed she once walked in on Ruma lying on top of Nish with her shirt off. When someone finds Nish in a compromising situation with a woman, he has claimed he was asleep or not consenting to said interaction. In Nish’s response to the allegations in this article, he says, “there are indeed drugs in my space” but claims users are ingesting their “own supply.”

Nish is good at what he does. It’s hard to tell whether he made these women go insane or if they were insane to begin with. In some of their posts, e.g. Ruma’s post where she says she institutionalized herself, they do appear unstable, to put it mildly.

After embracing the “left-hand path,” members of his own community posted screenshots of him encouraging women to cheat on their boyfriends and husbands with him. One former partner told me he had been a pickup artist long before he became a guru.

“I wouldn’t really call what he’s doing Hinduism,” she said. “I can’t stress enough how much he is making all this up as he goes along.”

In a since-deleted Instagram post discussing Lucifer, Nish wrote:

“I knew in my heart that I would never accept a world where I could not express myself and say what I wanted and do what I wanted, as per my whim and whimsy.”

We contacted Nish Selvalingam before publication and provided him with the central allegations contained in this story. His full unedited response is reproduced below:

“Thanks for reaching out, Jack! Very kind of you to want to hear my side of the story. You should know: I have never entered a non consensual romantic or sexual relationship with anyone. The accusation that I raped someone at that Arizona party was wildly inappropriate: there was no police report filed whatsoever and the person who accused me barely knew me and not once was I ever alone with them. It was defamation and slander and a false allegation. Further, no one was given any drugs but there are indeed drugs in my space: people do consume psychedelics and marijuana and alcohol but often it is their own supply and they are adults capable of making their own choices. I would never have relations with someone who was under the influence and never have. I’m not sure what they mean by grooming or gaslighting but my relationship with Ruby, a former student was to my knowledge consensual and wholesome. We dated for three months before I broke up with her which is when she started the Reddit thread claiming that I abused by authority as a spiritual teacher. I believe it to be a way of getting at me and a reaction to me breaking her heart. An individual named Ruma ran away into the night at our last retreat and that’s what created some buzz around our space being unsafe for mentally unstable people. I did not perform exorcisms along Abrahamic lines and I never tied this girl to a tree or anything as some are claiming. She is my friend and remains so and has given her own statement supporting my decision to let her leave when she wanted to, even though many felt she wasn't in her right mind to be making that decision. I stand by her decision to leave and mine to let her leave. Regarding Chrissy, she was caught with possession of meth weeks after she visited me. I never gave her any meth or noticed her having any habit or problems when she visited me back in April. I have nothing to do with Chrissy’s incarceration or mental illness though many have claimed my spiritual instruction is what led to her psychosis. I simply don’t think that’s true. I’ve only slept with one woman, Ruby and that was in the context of what I felt to be a mature and wholesome consensual relationship. Also, I have no organization nor mean to start any. I’m just a 30 year old man making content about Kali on the internet. There are no under age individuals in my space and all our substances have been legal as per the states we’ve been gathering privately in.

I hope all of this will help your story! The controversy around me makes for good tabloid news though I’m sure haha.

Ever yours,
Nish”

Is Nish the Fish yet another victim of post-humiliation female vengeance cancel culture? Or is he a satanic force of genuine evil? In either instance, I doubt we’ve heard the last of him. As of yesterday, he was still posting through the allegations, lecturing about white knights, neocolonialism, and virtue signaling. “You claim to be a defender of Sanatana dharma but you impose your understanding on other brown, indigenous practitioners,” he posted in a screenshot on Instagram.