Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty was detained and questioned at Mumbai airport Wednesday, over a kiss she received from Richard Gere five months ago.

Immigration officials stopped Shetty to question her, saying she was wanted for an obscenity charge over the kiss, which occurred at a public AIDS awareness event in New Delhi in April.

Hollywood actor Richard Gere's enthusiastic embrace and kiss last April is still causing trouble for Shilpa Shetty.
(Gurinder Osan/Associated Press)

Shetty, who was on her way to Berlin where she is to star in the musical Miss Bollywood, was very upset by the incident, her publicist said.

"She called me in the middle of the night and was in tears," said her spokesman Dale Bhagwagar.

Officials at the airport apparently had no record of a Supreme Court court ruling that overturned a ban on her leaving the country.

"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," Bhagwagar quoted Shetty as saying.

She eventually was allowed to continue on her journey.

A warrant was issued for Gere's arrest and Shetty faced an obscenity charge over the kissing incident, which drew protests from Hindu hard-liners.

A lower court had banned her from leaving India, but the Supreme Court suspended legal proceedings against the actress, who gained international attention with an appearance on Britain's Big Brother TV program.

Gere apologized for any offence he may have caused, but the star of Pretty Woman also said the controversy had been manufactured by a small hard-line political party.

With files from the Associated Press