Beauty Contest In Bathinda Offers 'Canadian Groom' As Prize, Organizers Arrested

How far can you go for an NRI groom? The craze for 'NRI' grooms has reached its peak as the Bhatinda beauty contest listed a 'Canadian Groom' as its prize for the winner. In Bhatinda, posters promoting a beauty pageant for ladies "only from general castes" claimed that the winner would get to marry an NRI settled in Canada.

Beauty Contest/Twitter

The alleged beauty pageant, which offered a Canadian groom as a prize, was scheduled to take place on October 23 in a hotel in the city.

Bathinda police arrest beauty contest organizers

Flickr

Surinder Singh and Ram Dyal Singh, the contest's organizers, were arrested by police late Thursday night. An investigation is underway, stated Parwinder Singh, the station house officer at Kotwali.

Police have registered a case under sections 501 (printing matter known to be defamatory), 509 (intending to insult the modesty of any woman), 109 (an offers or bribe as a reward for some favor in the exercise of an official function) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Indecent Representation of Women Prohibition Act, three against the accused.

'Offer seems to exploit girls by dangling the bait of marriage with boy settled in Canada'

Objectionable posters were pasted in some parts of Bathinda city and were also circulating on #Socialmedia in which Indecent words were written against women. #YourSafetyOurPriority #ActionAgainstCrime pic.twitter.com/6Ti3jsMfaW

¡ª BATHINDA POLICE (@BathindaPolice) October 13, 2022

Sukhpal Singh Sra, the secretary of the Punjab BJP, raised the matter after noticing posters for the beauty pageant all over the city. To draw attention to the problem and demand action against the guilty, he wrote to Bathinda SSP.

The BJP leader claimed that such a proposition appeared to exploit girls by offering them the chance to wed a Canadian boy.

Representative Image/Star India

"We feel there is something indecent in all this. Also, the exploitation of girls cannot be ruled out. The police need to look into the matter," he added.

Sra continued by stating that the advertisement highlights the people's love and enthusiasm to visit Canada, which some people take advantage of.

Punjabis account for 60% of all migration to Canada

At a conference in 2020, Christopher Kerr, the director of operations for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), stated that Punjabis, who made up 2.3 percent of Canada's population, constituted 60 percent of the immigration to the country.

According to Statistics Canada's release of the census statistics for 2021 in August of this year, Punjab is the fourth most widely spoken language in the nation.

According to the census, Mandarin and Punjabi are the two languages spoken in Canada, most commonly after its two official languages, English and French.

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