A fashion shoot by a Mumbai-based photographer depicting a model being groped by men on a bus in a setting chillingly similar to the 2012 Delhi gang-rape, has caused outrage on social media.
Raj Shetye’s series of photographs titled “The Wrong Turn” show a woman fighting off men inside a bus; in one particularly appalling image, she is shown struggling between two men, one of them bent over her leg in an aggressive posture.
The link for the photos, which went viral on Twitter and Facebook, has been deleted after angry reactions and is now redirected to an error page.
In an interview to Buzzfeed.com, Mr. Shetye has denied that he based his shoot on incidents of 16 December, 2012, when a young medical student was raped and tortured by six men on a moving bus. The 22-year-old woman, who came to be known as “Nirbhaya” or fearless, died 16 days later of horrific injuries.
“It is not based on Nirbhaya. But being a part of society and being a photographer, that topic moves me from inside. I stay in a society where my mother, my girlfriend, my sister are out there and something like this can happen to them also,” the photographer was quoted by Buzzfeed as saying.
Mr. Shetye said he didn’t glamorize the incident; the photo shoot was a way of ‘throwing light’ on the gang-rape and to show that it can happen to anyone, no matter “which class she belongs to.”
The photographer has been slammed on twitter for the shoot described by many as “extremely insensitive and sickening”.
“Did I just see a fashion-spread depicting the Delhi gangrape of Nirbhaya? Disgusting! I hope all associated, die of shame! Insensitive swine,” tweeted music composer Vishal Dadlani.
“No dearth of morons, a fashion photo shoot ‘inspired’ by the Nirbhaya gang rape. How seriously we take rape & human dignity in this country,” wrote Gayatri.
