A member of Bahawalpur’s Abbasi family, the former nawabs of the once princely state, calls out the Maria B brand for posting and later deleting pictures and videos of a campaign shot in their private family graveyard.
The photos were from the designer’s new collection ‘Roohi’ and were posted on Thursday on Facebook. The campaign featured shots from various locations in Bahawalpur. In it, the models are seen walking and twirling around in multiple locations, one of which was identified as the private graveyard of the royal family of Bahawalpur. The videos and pictures have since been deleted, and the Maria B page posted an apology for the “unfortunate incident”.
The old Royal Graveyard is in Ahmadpur Sharqiya Tehsil of Bahawalpur and it is where the graves of the Abbasi Nawab family heads have been buried, including Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi, the former ruler of Bahawalpur state. There are several mausoleums around the cemetery, which were constructed for the wives of the nawabs. There are two sections of the cemetery — one in which the 12 rulers are buried and another in which the newer generation is buried. Only members of the Abbasi family and people who come to pray at the graves are allowed in that area. The Abbasi dynasty ruled the state of Bahawalpur from 1690 to 1955 for nearly two and a half centuries.
Changez Khan, a grandson of Sahibzada Mohammad Daud Khan Abbasi, a son of the last nawab, posted pictures of the campaign on his public Instagram account where he accused Maria B of holding an unauthorised photo shoot on the grave of his maternal grandfather. He said: “This outline is my Nana’s grave. This model is dancing on my grandfather’s grave!”