Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood star and Celebrity Big Brother winner, has become involved in an outcry after Richard Gere repeatedly kissed her on stage at an Aids awareness event that the pair were promoting.

Angry crowds in the conservative north of India set fire to dolls representing Gere who, as a practising Buddhist, is a regular visitor to the sub-continent and prides himself on his adherence to local customs.

He appeared to overstep the mark at a televised press conference in Delhi on Sunday night to raise awareness of Aids and HIV among India’s lorry drivers, one of the highest risk groups.

In front of a catcalling crowd of truckers, Gere kissed Shetty on the hand before bending her back in a full embrace, kissing her lingeringly on both cheeks. In a country where displays of affection are still largely taboo and kissing in public illegal, the over-the-top mock Bollywood pose was not well received. Even Shetty appeared taken aback. “This is a bit too much,” she said as she recovered her composure and adjusted her sari.

Pictures of the kiss were splashed across the front pages of newspapers and protesters whipped into a frenzy by hardline political activists. Effigies of Gere were burnt by fans of Shetty in Kanpur, Meerut, Indore and Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city. In the more cosmopolitan city of Bombay, members of Shiv Sena, the right-wing Hindu nationalist group, beat flaming effigies of the actor with sticks and even set fire to pictures of the actress, dancing around the ashes and shouting “Death to Shilpa Shetty”.

“Such a public display is not part of Indian tradition,” Prakash Javadekar, spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, a more mainstream Hindu nationalist party, said.

Shetty held an impromptu press conference outside her Bombay home last night in an effort to contain the situation. Clearly shaken and angered by the public reaction, she condemned the reporters on her doorstep for pursuing what she called a trivial story. “I am shell-shocked by the reaction,” she said. “Everything has been blown out of proportion on TV. It is a very trivial matter. I don’t think we should be wasting national time. Talk about the issue of Aids. We are talking about India being progressive and this is how we behave. This is not how we treat our guests.”

Gere appeared at a fairground in Delhi on behalf of the Heroes Project, a voluntary group, and the Transport Corporation of India Foundation, to promote the safe-sex message. The 3 million lorry drivers in India are responsible for a spread of HIV by having unprotected sex with prostitutes during their long-haul journeys and then infecting their wives back home.

Past troubles

— After being asked once too often about being a sex object, Gere is said to have exposed himself to a reporter, snapping: “You want to see a sex object?”

— His marriage to Cindy Crawford prompted claims that it was a cover for their homosexuality. They took out a full-page advert in The Times announcing their love, then split months later

— After American Gigolo, his image as “international sex symbol” enraged a lorry driver, who then forced Gere’s car off the road.

Source: Times database

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end