"Justice For SSR" has been a totally organic citizen's campaign to make sure that Sushant Singh Rajput's death is probed fairly and by a competent authority. The campaign started online after Mumbai Police was unable to show progress in the death probe and also a communication gap resulted in a public perception that "something is being hidden". Sushant Singh Rajput's death became a war cry: people exerted their democratic right to demand justice from the government. And Government did pay heed to it. India's top most investigative agency CBI was asked to probe the case and the probe thereafter has been fair and totally up to the mark. The campaign is a proud moment for India's democracy.
But one thing went wrong in the meanwhile: Several campaigners went "overboard". It is not to undermine the feelings of a sister, but Sushant's USA based sister Shweta Singh Kirti started getting "billboards" arranged all over the USA, writing the campaign slogan: "#JusticeForSSR":
From the beginning, I thought that the billboards were totally unnecessary because: (1) A campaign in the USA for death case of an Indian actor in India was unnecessary, (2) It created a wrong impression as if our country's legal system was corrupt, (3) The message these billboards sent to unsuspecting Americans was that "until you run a campaign, you won't get justice in India". I found these billboards stupid, because these were made with a good intention but were causing harm to our country's image.
What is worst than something stupid? Something more stupid than plain stupid! The billboard company walked out of the contract and pulled down the hoardings after terming those as part of a "smear campaign".
The fact is that the #JusticeForSSR was never a smear campaign against actress Rhea Chakraborty. It is merely that when a new angle came where Rhea was found to be holding Sushant captive, isolating him from his family and giving him drugs, people had started writing against her. But #JusticeForSSR was not "all about Rhea". #JusticeForSSR had started much before Rhea's involvement came into picture; and would also have gone beyond her with passage of time.
The Hollywood Billboard company had no right to insult Indian democracy by calling a purely people's campaign as a "smear campaign".
As if the billboards did not cause enough damage to our country's reputation already, the billboard company's nasty comment defamed our democracy in a worse manner. I wonder if the company had some kind of ideology issue with the campaign, or if its team is merely incompetent. Incompetency can be best excuse in this case because otherwise it looks totally unprofessional to first take money, put billboards and later do a shoddy research on its topic and cancel the contract.
The billboards and their end, both can be called avoidable side story in the "Justice For SSR" campaign.
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