In Search Of Young Girls And Widows, Greater Kashmir Lost Its Credibility
Umran Hussain
A local daily news paper “Greater Kashmir” was slammed for publishing a controversial advertisement that wanted “young girls, housewives and widows for a leading spa job in Delhi.”
Soon after the news paper hit the stands, the advert in it overran the internet particularly Twitter and Facebook with people calling it insensitive, irresponsible and immoral.
“This advertisement in greater Kashmir has gone viral in Kashmir, people are very angry with GK. It is unfortunate that this news paper published this add. It directly means the paper wants to sell the daughters of Kashmir, really unfortunate.” Tweeted Sajid Raina.
“Disgraceful that Greater Kashmir is giving space to such ads which are just a manifesto of prostitution. This paper needs to be refused with immediate effect at all levels by everyone of us. They now promote vulgarity in society, just in exchange of few pennies.” Tweeted another Twitter user.
Another user wrote, “Many Many congratulations to Greater Kashmir for establishing a new job of Pimps(Dalals). It’s an honor for whole Kashmir that Kashmir’s so called leading Newspaper is advertising such a filthy thing along with their number and email. This is the result of our dead consciousness that willy nilly we don’t even know what we are selling. As per my assessment the base of every evil in Kashmir is Riba which is day in and day out propagated and promted by JK BANK, the saying of Rasool Allahﷺ is that RIBA makes one spineless. So here is the result despite such advertisements Greater Kashmir is being followed on Insta, Tweeter, Facebook and YouTube by the majority of Kashmiris. Does this prove that we are interested in selling our female folk?”
The newspaper has now issued a public apology. “We have placed a disclaimer on all advertisements that our organization is not responsible for the content or claims of any advertisement. Nevertheless, we regret the inadvertent publication of this classified advertisement. We will at our own cost for any inconvenience caused by the advertisement.
Apologies to the readers. We will ensure that in future such advertisements are not published in our newspaper. Also, we are further checking the content of the advertisement with the advertising agency Walnut Ads in the GK Advertisement section.”
The news paper further clarified that, “We have placed a disclaimer on all advertisements that our organisation is not responsible for contents or claims of any ads. Still we regret inadvertent publication of this classified ad. We apologise to our valued readers for any inconvenience caused by the ad. We will ensure that such ads are not published in our paper in future. Besides, we are investigating further the contents of the ad with the advertising agency Walnut Ads. GK Advertisement Section.”
later in the evening, Greater Kashmir informed the public that they have sacked two employees responsible for verifying the advertisements before sending them for the print and have blacklisted the advertising agency which had placed the ad.
