News

Rape scene used for promoting film called Pocket Gangster

2 Sep 2014

Today when filmmakers and more so the PR agencies are constantly looking out for that one eye catching fact about a film to promote it, there are few who can also go extremely outrageous in the process. However, taking to another level was the recent press release that was received as a part of a press plug-in from a PR to promote the film Pocket Gangsters. Shockingly, the headline for the release read, "Pocket Gangsters rape scene featuring Shivangi Mehra and Vijay Raaz goes viral on FB".

If that wasn't enough to add more to the over active imagination, the PR agency went ahead and decided to attach a few more clips and links to the mail, which were titled as follows: 'Hot Shivangi Mehra bathing scene from Pocket Gangsters' 'Shivangi Mehra refuses to wear a bikini for Pocket Gangsters' 'Vijay Raaz insists on 15 kissing scenes with Shivangi Mehra in Pocket Gangsters' 'Bikini babe from the song Jaaniya promo of Pocket Gangsters' 'Red Hot clip from the song Jaaniya promo of Pocket Gangsters' Furthermore the first paragraph of the release goes, "A clip of a rape scene from the film Pocket Gangsters featuring Shivangi Mehra and Vijay Raaz has gone viral on Facebook with over 50,000 sharesover the weekend on the popular social networking site. While the video is not doing badly on YouTube, photographs, screen shots and posts on Facebook apparently seem to have picked up on Sunday morning resulting in over 50,000 shares and LIKES. The story of the film is based on the true accountof a kidnapping survivor", a truly appalling and insensitive way of cashing in on the recent spate of sexual abuse and leaks that have been making headlines.

Later the director of the film, Hemant Nilim Das, released a statement that defended his stance while trying to do certain level of damage control stating, "We meant to say that the link was "hot" or "live". We were just mentioning a fact, stating that a clip or link was "buzzing" on Facebook." The explanation obviously isn't convincing enough as the makers and the PR seemed to have a simple strategy on mind, 'Sell Sex'!