Gere Apologizes for India Kissing Controversy, Shetty Fans Angry at Magistrate

by Jordan Yerman | April 27, 2007 at 12:37 pm

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A contrite Richard Gere has apologized for causing such a fuss by kissing superstar Shilpa Shetty, redirecting public attention towards the AIDS awareness and prevention program he was there to promote in the first place. No word yet if authorities will drop the arrest warrant, which many see as grandstanding by a conservative elite. And it's not just legions of Shilpa Shetty fans who are angry...

[q
url="http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=23068"]A
deep trouble is brewing for the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate
Dinesh Gupta after his controversial gagging order against Hollywood
actor and AIDS activist Richard Gere invited ire of a number of eminent
jurists and legal experts of the country.

The former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee has termed additional
chief judicial magistrate Dinesh Gupta's orders similar to moral
policing done by Taliban in Afghanistan, as reported in a local daily.

"Magistrates should not behave like Taliban moral police. The order
is unsustainable and makes us look ridiculous," said Soli Sorabjee, the
former Attorney General.

[/q]

Richard Gere tried to quell the storm over a public kiss he gave a Bollywood star at an AIDS awareness event, apologizing Friday for any offense.

Gere's embrace and kiss of actress Shilpa Shetty sparked several noisy demonstrations by hard-line Hindu groups and a flurry of legal complaints, which ended with a judge in the northwestern city of Jaipur issuing an arrest warrant for the two stars for violating obscenity laws.

"What is most important to me is that my intentions as an HIV/AIDS advocate be made clear, and that my friends in India understand that it has never been, nor could it ever be, my intention to offend you," Gere said in statement issued by the Heroes Project, an organization the 57-year-old actor co-founded to combat AIDS in India.