Jaipur:
Till earlier this week, large hoardings in Jaipur campaigning against child marriage showed a young girl, her head covered. The same photograph was used on government websites along with details of welfare schemes for young girls and women.
The hoardings have been removed; so have the online photos, after it emerged that the poster-child was a young Pakistani who was kidnapped two years ago. The mistake was leaked to the media by a government official.
The young girl's photo had been used in news stories at the time that reported on young Pakistani Hindu girls who were being forced to change their religion before being married.
"This picture has been used in the government's publicity material for some time. I am investigating what happened," said Rekha Gupta, who took over recently as the Director of the Women and Child Weflare Department, which allegedly circulated the photo for use to other government ministries.
Sources said that one reason why the mistake went undetected for so long is that the girl in the photograph is wearing the sort of traditional outfit that is often seen in Western Rajasthan. But adjoining Sindh, the Pakistani province from where the girl went missing, has a culture similar to the desert people of Jaislamer and Barmer
A new angle to the controversy has been added by reports that the picture is also posted on another website as that of a girl from Kutch in Gujarat, raising new doubts about who she really is.