Slain U.S. student's face on ads in India

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C., March 21 (UPI) -- A firm's use of a photograph of a U.S. student killed in 2008 in its billboards in India is disturbing, a friend of the murder victim's family says.

Eve Carson's face appears on billboards for Jubeerich Consultancy in southern India that offer overseas work and study to young people, The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer reported Wednesday. Carson was student body president and a Morehead-Cain scholar at the University of North Carolina when she was killed by two men who first forced her to withdraw money from her bank account.

"I'm surprised and disappointed that somebody is using Eve's image in this way," said Chuck Lovelace, executive director of the Morehead-Cain Scholars Program who has been close to Carson's family and talked to Carson's mother about the billboards. "It certainly does not honor Eve or her family, and they would not want it to be used in this way."

The company uses photos of about 20 attractive young Westerners in its advertising. It is unclear how it came by Carson's photo, the official portrait taken when she became student body president, and whether it realizes who she was.

Jubeerich did not respond to e-mails requesting information, the newspaper said.

Legal experts said Carson's family and the university might have trouble getting the picture removed from advertising in India.

Deborah Gerhardt, a law professor at the university, said appealing to the company on the grounds of decency might be the best recourse: "You just have to hope that people will respect the dignity of her family and her memory and understand that for people who see this in the United States, this really evokes a horrible tragedy."