Soon after the state government imposed ban on the operation of 26 social networking sites in Kashmir, Zeyan Shafiq, a 16 year old boy, hailing from district Anantnag started working on the development of an application named ‘KashBook’, which as per him, will help people stay connected.

However, the achievement is being seen from a different angle in the section of national media, with some terming this app an effort to mobilize stone pelters, saying that it may “deteriorate the already prevailing sensitive situation in the valley.”

The main motive behind the development of the app was to counter the social media gag, and as per Zeyan “the app was a reaction to the social media ban imposed by the government.”

The news was reported as an inspiring event by various news channels; however, a section of national media has been portraying it with a different colour. A leading Hindi news channel has recently claimed to have done an investigative story trying to find if the app is being used to mobilize stone pelters in the valley, and may pose as a threat to the security situation in Kashmir.

The family members of Zeyan were joyous about the achievement of their son, earlier; however, now that the media has started a campaign to project it in a different light, his family members have started to sound a bit panicky.

With Zeyan’s mother, Asiya Shafiq said that they are seriously thinking about if they should let Zeyan engage with this app or not.

“Instead of discouraging the kid, the media should have taken it in a positive manner, and would have pushed him more towards pursuing for achieving excellence in the field,” she said.

While netizens are terming Zeyan as ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ of Kashmir, he is also being seen as an inspiration for the younger generation in Kashmir.

The application is available on Google Play, with more than one thousand downloads so far.

It is pertinent to mention here that the users with the help of VPN (Virtual Private Network) have been actively using all the social media apps, without any access bars. The government’s ban on social media had visibly no impact on their usage, with people continuously switching form one VPN to other VPN network.

The app, KashBook according to Zeyan can work without VPN and can help the users to stay connected as long as there is internet connectivity. 

Guest