For Unlawlful Carnal Knowledge
"A court issued arrest warrants for Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Thursday, saying their kiss at a public function ?transgressed all limits of vulgarity,? media reports said.
Judge Dinesh Gupta issued the warrants in the northwestern city of Jaipur after a local citizen filed a complaint charging that the public display of affection offended local sensibilities, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Gupta earlier viewed television footage of the event, which he called ?highly sexually erotic,? saying the pair violated India?s strict public obscenity laws."
Labels: hilarity
posted by Dody G. at 2:19 PM
7 Comments:
This is actually quite stale news in India, if it indeed ever was considered newsworthy. A few channels carried it for tabloid effect's sake and left it at that. Not sure wtf Gere was trying other than to play up the media anyway.
And trust some moron in Jaipur to do this...a few of us got arrested for alleged "obscenity" when attending a conference there in 2002. Our "crime"? - one of the boys in our delegation had his arm around one of the girls while walking down the street.
But the Gere episode is also pretty representative of the double standards and chronic moral legislations that are common to this at-times baffling country.
5:48 PM
Unnecessary hype!
Silly act of raising a complain.
A
8:19 PM
Abhi, I remember being terrified hanging outside the dodgy police station in the middle of nowhere while all you guys were inside. This city has serious issues.
How and why did they let us off anyway?
2:05 AM
They're now planning a Lover's Park in Mumbai where people can get into public displays of affection in 'privacy'. :)
............AND, crucially, not worry about random idiots taking them to court over kissing someone.
5:18 AM
I think too many people in India are looking for cheap publicity. And our media gives it to them. As the actors pointed out, the cause of AIDS awareness and the limelight around it has been completely lost.
No idea what Gere was trying to prove by kissing her 18 times (yes someone in the media even counted the number of kisses).
Abs, Aditi - which conf were you attending in jaipur in 2002??
Just to be fair on the city, since there are so many foreigners (specially women), the cops do take the girl-boy thingy too seriously. And of course, the "moral" police doesnt mind using their power every now and then.
8:08 AM
experience called life: uhh we were all brown Indians, no foreigners. So not sure what you mean. We were attending Natcong so apologies it was 2001. And if that had happened to me in Bangalore I would have brought the same news hungry media crashing down and made good fun out of the episode! :) But seriously if this had happened in Bangalore things would have been very different for the cops.
10:17 AM
what i meant with "they take it too seriously" was that sometimes they even come hard on indians. Jaipur is a traditional city, which is opening up now, unlike bangalore where things like these are normal.
12:53 PM
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