After being detained for as long as two hours early on Saturday at the Newark airport in the US, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan said that he would avoid coming to US now, for he doesn’t want to be a part of America’s paranoia of religion. Reacting to the actor’s statement about the country, the US Ambassador Timothy J Roemer said, “Shah Rukh is a global icon and is always welcome in the US. Many Americans love his films.”
Roemer’s statement has come as the first reaction of American government to Shah Rukh’s detaining episode.
Khan, who is on a visit to the US to attend an Indian Independence Day event as the guest of honour, was released after intervention from Congress MP Rajiv Shukla, who spoke to the authorities in the US and the Indian consulate. However, the US Embassy says that they are still finding out what really happened at the incident.
“We are clarifying. We are trying to ascertain facts about the incident,” US Embassy official said.
SRK was reportedly detained because of his surname ‘Khan’ that features on the alert list of US airport officials since the 9/11 attacks. According to reports, the actor was detained after his name flashed on the computer. Khan was asked a bounty of questions about the purpose of his visit. His hand baggage was checked and he was not even allowed to make a single phone call for about an hour.
In a statement given to a news daily, SRK said, “I told them I was a movie star and had recently visited the country for the shooting of my film. Nothing seemed to convince the immigration officer. There were other immigration officers who even vouched for me but this particular officer did not listen to anyone. I even told them I had an invitation from the South Asian community and was there to attend an event.”
This episode, quite ironically, comes at a time when SRK is wrapping up Karan Johar’s ‘My Name Is Khan’, a film touching upon the same issue, that of the minority being targeted for no fault of theirs only because of suspicion and no solid proof.
The actor is to return to India on August 18.
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