US authorities asked me 'strange' questions: SRK

Back from a rocky visit to America where he went through two hours of questioning at Newark Airport on Friday, Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan held a press conference
at his Mumbai home, Mannat, on Tuesday.

The actor said the US authorities "asked me a lot of strange questions". He said he felt "they were asking embarrassing, irrelevant questions".

Insisting that he did not "think it was a big deal", Shah Rukh said he did not believe he needed to be treated specially. And also that he did not throw his weight around. The actor said he respected the fact that rules needed to be followed, but also asked "if the US has a procedure, then why wasn't it followed?

He said he was lucky that he knew people in the embassy. He also said in the course of the press conference that the US needed to upgrade its security systems.

The Shah Rukh Khan incident came just days after former President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was frisked by personnel of a US airline. Both incidents caused much anger among Indians the world over.

Shah Rukh, who has recently finished shooting in the US for his film My Name is Khan, was detained and questioned for almost two hours at the airport as part of what the US calls "racial profiling" to weed out terror suspects.

On Tuesday, he arrived at the Mumbai airport to a welcome from crowds of people. A big media contingent had also gathered. As he got into his car at the airport, Shah Rukh waved, smiled and gave his trademark salaam to the crowd

After his two-hour ordeal in the US sparked a furore in India, Shahrukh had on Monday asked his fans not to take the issue further, even as he said that America needed to offer "a little more warmth and speed in its processes".

Earlier, in Houston, where he arrived from Chicago to attend a 'Meet and Greet' carnival, the actor said he respected the procedures the US required people to follow, but maintained his experience was "not pleasant". Immediately after being detained at the airport Shah Rukh had told his fans that he did not feel like stepping on US soil again.