Zomato faces flak for ad depicting ‘Lagaan’ character Kachra as recycled waste items, deletes video

Apologising for “unintentionally” hurting sentiments, restaurant aggregator Zomato on Thursday withdrew an ad after it came under fire for depicting the actor who played the Dalit character Kachra in the film Lagaan as items made of recycled waste.

The ad, which draws a link between the character Kachra with ‘kachra’, the Hindi word for garbage, was aired on World Environment Day on June 5.

As ire grew and the ad came under attack on social media for being “casteist”, the company issued an apology from its official Twitter handle and said the intent was to “spread awareness about the potential of plastic waste and benefits of recycling in a humorous way”.