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New Delhi: The Indian government has summoned the US Deputy Chief of Mission for detaining actor Shah Rukh Khan at an American airport. Earlier, US apologised to the actor for any inconvenience when he was detained for over two hours at an American airport and said it would put in place systems that can help address such circumstances.
US Embassy spokesperson Peter Vrooman said many Americans are great fans of Indian movies and respect the work of "great actor" Shahrukh Khan.
"Please allow me on behalf of our diplomatic mission in India to apologise if Mr Shahrukh Khan experienced an inconvenience or delay yesterday in White Plains, New York on his way to Yale University," he told reporters here.
Mr Khan was detained at a New York airport for over two hours by immigration officials after arriving from India in a private plane with Nita Ambani, to address students at Yale University here.
While Nita, wife of Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, and the rest of their group were cleared immediately, Mr Khan was stopped and was given immigration clearance only after about two hours.
India has reacted strongly to the incident. Foreign Minister SM Krishna has asked Indian Ambassador to the US, Nirupama Rao, to take up the issue with US authorities. "This has become a habit of detention and then apology, this cannot continue. We need an assurance that this won't happen again" Mr Krishna said.
According to reports, while everyone else was cleared by the immigration department, the actor was made to wait. Intervention by consulate finally helped, sources added.
Sources also said that India may now consider extending the same treatment to US citizens visiting India.
"If you stop someone because of his/her name or some other reasons for so 2-3 hours and then apologise and let him go, this is not fair. They should have records, anyone who has gone through this procedure once, should not go through it again. And for known figures, a data bank should be maintained. This has been done with Dr Kalam as well, it's sad. I got to know that everyone knew Shah Rukh there and then acted like this, it's completely uncalled for. The Foreign Minister has already condemned it," Congress leader Rajiv Shukla said.
Immediately after the incident, the US Customs and Border Protection addressed letter to India's New York Mission expressing "profound" apologies for the incident.
Back home, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah reacted on Twitter, saying: "Honestly what's the big deal?? This airport detention thing happens all the time & to all sorts of people. Get over it." (Buzz on Twitter)
Mr Khan, who has been named a Chubb Fellow, was accompanied by Nita Ambani and they were understood to have arrived in a private plane at the New York's White Plain airport. Mrs Ambani's daughter is a student at Yale University.
Mr Khan's plane landed in New York at 12:30 pm but he didn't make it to Yale till 6 pm, two hours late for his scheduled speech.
When he finally did address the students at Yale, which is three hours from New York, Mr Khan said: "We were detained at the airport as always. For one and a half hours. It was nice. It always happens when I come to America. Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself I take a trip to America."
"Mr Khan was very very upset at the episode. Yale University officials had to contact the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Department at Washington, when they came to know about his detention," sources said.
This is not the first time Mr Khan has been stopped at an American airport. In 2009 also, he was stopped at the Newark airport and was released after a two hour grilling.
Shailja Gupta, who is the USA head of Mr Khan's production house Red Chillies Entertainment, said that he was expecting to be stopped this time as well and that he answered all questions with grace and patience. She also said that the airport officials recognised him but continued with the questioning.
Shah Rukh Khan detention saga Part II: My name is ... Kaun?
WASHINGTON: All the time, money, and effort that he expended in declaring "My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist" evidently had little impact on US airport officials. The Indian government on Friday intervened strongly on behalf of Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan after he was stopped for extended questioning by US airport authorities who, by the star's own account, "kick the star out of stardom."
The second episode involving Shah Rukh Khan vs US airport officials (the previous one was in 2009) went something like this: Khan arrived at White Plains Airport on a small private plane along with industrialist spouse Nita Ambani and some others en route to Yale University, where the Bollywood megastar was to receive a Chubb fellowship and deliver a speech.
While Ambani and others were cleared swiftly, Khan was reportedly stopped for extended questioning about his program. By Khan's own account, related in interactions with students when he finally reached Yale some three hours behind schedule, he was held back for 90 minutes. Others said it was two hours.
On the face of it, Khan appeared to take the episode in his stride and even joked about it, telling students "whenever I start feeling too arrogant, I take a trip to America." But his supporters and aides put a much more serious spin on it, saying the star was furious and it required the intervention of Yale authorities to expedite his release, although at no point was he considered under detention.
Khan also spoke snarkily about some of the off-the-cuff answers he gave authorities, flippantly underplaying the gravity of the episode which India's ministry of external affairs considered serious enough to intervene in.
External Affairs Minister SM Krishna is said to have asked Ambassador Nirupama Rao to take up the matter with the highest US. authorities. MEA sources (and not the minister himself) was quoted by wire services as saying, "Repeated problem for same person followed by clearance on account of consulate intervention and mechanical apology is not adequate."
The reference evidently was to a previous episode in 2009 when Khan was stopped for a similar length of time on arrival in America with questions about his program in the US, an incident which was followed by profuse US apologies, as was this one.
While that episode erupted into headline news based on exaggerated accounts of his "detention," US sources later told ToI that Bollywood stars and other Indian artists were under the scanner for financial transactions, including illegal cash payments, that some of them get through dodgy promoters.
At that time Khan had complained that "They were asking me silly questions like if I knew someone in the US. who could vouch for me, if I could give them numbers of people they could get in touch with." It turned out that they had a good reason to ask those questions.
There is also another American narrative: US officials privately say that many so called Indian elite have a sense of privilege which makes them think they are beyond scrutiny. They also blame the Indian media for exaggerated distorted accounts, including use of words such as "detention" and "strip search" where all that has happened is extended questioning or what they call "secondary inspection."
For instance, in this case, it was also not immediately cleared if Khan and others had arrived in White Plains on a domestic commuter charter after landing in JFK, in which case his international arrival would seem to have passed off without incident. Flying private charters if a name is already flagged would invite extra scrutiny.
Still, US officials reacted to New Delhi's complaints with the usual show of regret over the episode, leading MEA sources to dismiss it as part of a "mechanical response."
No one in US denies that airport officials are anything but mechanical -- and in their own eyes -- rule-bound, and overzealous. In the years before his death in 2009, Senator Ted Kennedy, one of America's most famous faces, was "detained" several times and not allwoed to board flights because his name matched an alias used by a suspected terrorist.
Things got so bad that Kennedy, in frustration, called a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he presented himself as witness and an "Exhibit A."
"Instead of acknowledging the craggy-faced, silver-haired septuagenarian as the Congressional leader whose face has flashed across the nation's television sets for decades, the airline agents acted as if they had stumbled across a fanatic who might blow up an American airplane. Mr Kennedy said they refused to give him his ticket," the New York Times reported about that hearing.
It continued: "He said, 'We can't give it to you,' " Mr Kennedy said, describing an encounter with an airline agent to the rapt audience. " 'You can't buy a ticket to go on the airline to Boston.' I said, 'Well, why not?' He said, 'We can't tell you.' "
"Tried to get on a plane back to Washington," Mr Kennedy continued. "'You can't get on the plane.' I went up to the desk and said, 'I've been getting on this plane, you know, for 42 years. Why can't I get on the plane?'"
The hearing room erupted in laughter."
But for the Indian MEA and Shah Rukh Khan, it is no laughing matter.
Shah Rukh Khan's detention case: India summons US Deputy Chief of Mission
Shah Rukh Khan detention saga Part II: My name is ... Kaun? - The Times of India
US regrets detaining Shah Rukh Khan at airport, 'mechanical apology' won't do, says India - Indian Express
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