An Indian court has issued arrest warrants for Richard Gere, the Hollywood actor, and Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood star, after he kissed her on the cheek at a public event to promote Aids awareness.

Dinesh Gupta, a judge in the northwestern city of Jaipur, issued the warrants today after a local lawyer filed a complaint accusing the pair of committing an “obscene act”.

After examining video footage of the event, the judge said that the stars’ behaviour was “highly sexually erotic”, “transgressed all limits of vulgarity” and “denigrated” Indian culture and social values. He also noted that Shetty’s attitude had been “co-operative” towards Gere, who has already left the country.

Similar complaints are often lodged against Bollywood stars in India, where kissing in public is illegal, but judges usually dismiss them early on. Another Indian court is considering a complaint that Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar violated Hindu rituals during their wedding in the city of Jodhpur last month.

If Gere and Shetty are convicted of public obscenity — which lawyers say is unlikely — they would face up to two years in prison and a fine of 2,000 rupees (£23).

Gere, the star of Pretty Woman and An Officer and a Gentleman, is a regular visitor to India as a follower of Tibetan Buddhism and keen supporter of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

He embraced Shetty, 31, and planted several kisses on her cheek — to the audience's delight and her embarrassment — at a rally to promote Aids awareness among lorry drivers in Delhi.

Images of the clinch were then splashed across Indian newspapers and shown repeatedly on television news bulletins with little mention of the cause the two actors were trying to promote.

Last week Hindu nationalists responded by protesting in several Indian cities and even burnt straw effigies of Gere.

The opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party also condemned the incident, saying that “such a public display is not part of Indian tradition”.

But Parmeshwar Godrej, a prominent Indian socialite who organised the event, called the controversy a distraction from the more important issues of Aids in India. “It has detracted from and undermined the value and success of the event,” she told the CNN-IBN television network.

India has the largest number of Aids cases in the world, with 5.7 million people infected, according to UNAIDS.

Ms Shetty, who won Celebrity Big Brother in Britain this year after being subjected to racist slurs, admits that the kiss may have gone a “little overboard” but denies that it was obscene.

She says that Mr Gere was simply trying to entertain the audience by re-enacting his moves from the film Shall We Dance? and that he has asked her to apologise on his behalf for any offence caused.

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