SRK's detention case: India asks US to avoid such incidents

Washington: Taking up Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan's detention case with the US, India has asked Washington to take steps in order to avoid such incidents in the future.

To "convey the deep concern that has been expressed nationwide in India" over Khan's detention at White Plains airport near New York on Thursday, the Indian Embassy here said that it has taken up the matter with the US Department of State.

It has also "sought the State Department's intervention to institute appropriate measures to avoid recurrence of such an incident in the future", it said in a press note on Saturday.

According to the embassy's version of the incident, about half an hour after the arrival of "the internationally renowned Indian film star" by a private jet at White Plains airport on Thursday afternoon, the Indian consulate in New York received information that he had not been cleared by the US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP).

"The Consulate General immediately intervened with the concerned authorities for his early clearance, which was done within 75 minutes of his arrival," it said.

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"Khan thereafter left the airport. The same evening, USCBP authorities, through an email to the Consulate General conveyed their profound apology for the incident.

Caught on the wrong foot over the detaining of Khan at a US airport twice in less than three years, Washington had on Friday asserted it was not a case of racial profiling or a pattern.

Suggesting that Khan was not "detained", but "simply delayed", State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said, "I wouldn't necessarily look at this as some sort of pattern but rather two separate incidents."

Toner also dismissed a suggestion that it was racial profiling. "I think we all know that that's clearly not the case. The fact of the matter is tens of thousands of Muslims travel to and from the United States every day and are not detained or delayed."

In August 2009, too, Khan was detained at New Jersey's Newark airport.