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Wednesday, January 25, 2006

South Indian film actress Khushboo said Tuesday she plans to sue a London-based men's magazine over a picture depicting her clad in scanty lingerie, saying it is "bad taste."

The star of Tamil-language movies, who last year created a storm in sexually conservative India when she said educated men could not expect their brides to be virgins, said she was "very upset" about the picture.

Maxim's inaugural Indian edition, which hit news stands last month, carried a mock-up picture of Khushboo wearing flimsy lingerie with the caption: "Of course, I am a virgin if you don’t count from the behind." Below, it printed "Women you will never see in Maxim" and "100 percent fake."

"Maxim has told me they will publicly apologise ... but I don’t think that’s enough," the 35-year-old actress told television station Headlines Today.

"The story and the photograph are both in bad taste. They have made derogatory remarks and I am very upset," she said.

Khushboo's lawyer R. Karthikeyan said the actress would file a lawsuit under an act protecting women from indecent representation, the Asian Age newspaper reported. He said she had not decided yet how much to seek in damages.

But Khushboo said there was "no question of an out-of-court settlement."

The actress is no stranger to controversy. Last year, she was pelted with tomatoes and rotten eggs after saying she saw nothing
wrong with premarital sex as long as partners practised safe sex.

Piyush Sharma, chief executive officer of Maxim India, the 30th international edition of the London-based magazine Maxim, said it would apologise to Khushboo.

He said the photo was a tongue-in-cheek feature about women who would not normally appear in a men's magazine and Maxim's other international editions carry similar pages.

"We were in no way trying to be pejorative. We respect her, she took a very admirable stand (on premarital sex)," Sharma told AFP. "The page says clearly it (the photo) is 100 percent fake. She is an admirable woman."

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