Jaipur, April 26
A Jaipur court on Thursday issued arrest warrants against Hollywood star Richard Gere and actress Shilpa Shetty for their public kiss during an AIDS awareness programme in the capital early this month.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jaipur city, Dinesh Gupta issued the warrants on a PIL filed by a Jaipur resident Poonam Chand Bhandari.

Gere’s kiss on Bollywood actress Shetty’s cheeks during an AIDS awareness programme had evoked strong protests in several cities Activists, mostly of Hindu outfits, in Varanasi, Bhopal, Kanpur, Indore, Delhi and Mumbai burnt effigies of Gere and Shetty to give vent to their anger over the actor’s act on stage at the programme in Delhi, calling it indecent behaviour.

Mumbai: Shilpa’s spokesperson Dale Bhagwagar, referring to remarks by a top-ranking police official from Jaipur that “if proven guilty, Gere and Shilpa could be sentenced to six years’ imprisonment”, clarified that Shilpa had not received any court order or summons.

He added that it was “amateur and frivolous” on the part of a government official to state that someone can get jailed for ``pecks on cheeks’’.

“If that is the case, more than half the country will have to be jailed,” quipped Bhagwagar. — Agencies