Those Touchy Radical Hindus

Shilpa Shetty, winner of this year's edition of  British reality show Big Brother, was detained (the always accurate Sun newspaper says she was "arrested") on anti-obscenity charges when trying to leave her native India yesterday. Cell phone porn film, perhaps? Bollywood snuff production? Try being kissed on the cheek by Sommersby star Richard Gere. Hindu fundamentalists were not amused:

The actress broke down in tears when stopped at Mumbai Airport, as she headed off to the Miss Bollywood musical in Berlin.

Shilpa, 32, said: "I can understand something like this if I'd committed a criminal offence. "But what was my offence, when I'm just an actor, going to perform a musical on foreign land."

Pretty Woman actor Richard, 58, caused uproar in India when he grabbed the Bollywood sweetheart and kissed her several times on the cheek at an Aids-awareness event earlier this year.

Crowds burned posters of the pair and hard-line Hindus claimed that they had violated the country's anti-obscenity laws.

Shetty was held at Mumbai Airport by immigration officials who had no record of a Supreme Court ruling which overturned a ban on her leaving the country.They said she was still wanted for obscenity charges over the kiss.

Video of the "obscene" kiss here.