NO Mid-day masala: Shahid and Kareena

Calcutta, Dec. 16: Published pictures of film star Kareena Kapoor and aspiring star Shahid Kapur kissing in a public place have set tongues working feverishly across the country.

Both actors have contested the authenticity of the pictures, Kareena even sending a legal notice to Mid Day, the Mumbai afternoon paper that printed the pictures in its edition yesterday.

Kareena and her fiance Shahid have accused Mid Day of doctoring the pictures, a charge that the paper?s editor, Meenal Baghel, has denied.

Mid Day said the pictures were captured stills from a video shot on a camera phone and videos cannot be morphed.

In a legal notice to the paper, Kareena demanded that it either apologise or face a Rs 20-crore lawsuit. She charged Mid Day with fabricating the photographs ?in order to create cheap publicity for the newspaper?.

Baghel refuted the charge. She said: ?Kareena didn?t know it was a video. She insists that we have doctored the images. But a mobile-phone video cannot be doctored and we haven?t done that.?