NEW DELHI, Jan 6: A video of nationally acclaimed ladies’ hairstylist Jawed Habib using his spit to style a woman’s hair during a workshop in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzzaffarnagar has gone viral on Twitter inviting sharp criticism. The National Commission for Women on Thursday said it has taken cognisance of the incident and the chairperson Rekha Sharma has written to the director general of the UP police to immediately investigate the veracity of the viral video and take appropriate action and apprise the commission at the earliest.
In the vial video, Jawed Habib used his spit as he was parting the hair of the woman and said, ‘If you don’t have water…this spit has life.”
Another video of the woman recounting the experience has also surfaced on social media. In that video, she identified herself as Puja Gupta, an owner of a beauty parlour. “Yesterday I attended a workshop of Jawed Habib sir. There he invited me on the stage to give me a haircut and he misbehaved. He said if there is no water, you can spit. I did not get my haircut. It’s better I will go to my street-side barber and get a haircut, but won’t go to Habib,” Pooja Gupta said.
In another interview the woman said, “I attended the workshop to learn something. But he was not answering my questions. Then he called me to the stage to teach cutting. He pushed my head, I objected and said I have cervical issues. Then he spat twice on my hair and said that if you don’t have water in your parlour then you can spit. My husband was making the video. After I came down from the stage, Habib’s assistant said he was just joking.”
(Manas Dasgupta)