A Mumbai sessions court on Monday upheld an order passed by a metropolitan magistrate, discharging Shilpa Shetty in a case of obscenity filed against her after Richard Gere had publicly kissed her at a promotional event in 2007.

The kissing incident had taken place during an AIDS awareness programme held in Rajasthan and had hit national headlines, with some segments calling it obscene. A case was registered in Rajasthan against Gere and Shetty under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology Act. 

The case was transferred to Mumbai in 2017. In January 2022, the magistrate’s court discharged Shetty after observing that she seemed to be the victim of Gere’s act.

On the allegation that Shetty did not protest when she was kissed, the magistrate’s court had said, “This by no stretch of the imagination makes her a conspirator or perpetrator of any crime.”