Aishwarya targeted in new Indian kissing row

INDIA: Bollywood megastar Aishwarya Rai has been summoned to explain an “obscene” kissing scene, Indian officials said Saturday, just days after a similar row engulfed Hollywood’s Richard Gere.

Rai, who married into the Indian film industry’s most famous family last week, was ordered to appear before a district court over a scene in which she is kissed lightly on the cheek.

Her “Dhoom-II” co-star Hrithik Roshan and the owners of a cinema which screened the action film have also been summoned to Muzaffarpur court in the eastern state of Bihar on May 30.

“The court also sent notices to the Bihar government for allowing screening of the film despite its ‘obscene’ content,” a court official said.

He said the judge handed out the orders after a lawyer argued the film “offended public sensibility.”

The 33-year-old Rai, who was crowned Miss World in 1994 and married Bollywood heart-throb Abhishek Bachchan last week, has not responded to the court order, government officials said in the state capital Patna.

The summons came after a district court in another state issued arrest warrants for Gere and Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, whom he kissed enthusiastically at an HIV/AIDS awareness show this month in New Delhi.

In both cases the celebrities are accused of indulging in “obscene acts” which carries a penalty of three months imprisonment, a fine or both. Public acts of endearment are banned in India under the British-era Obscenity Act.

Patna, Sunday, AFP.