NEW DELHI - A popular south Indian actress has been pelted with sandals, tomatoes and rotten eggs and hauled before court for telling Indian men not to expect their brides to be virgins anymore.

Khushboo, a 35-year-old star of Tamil language movies, told a magazine in September there was nothing wrong with premarital sex - as long as it was protected sex.

Initially, Khushboo's comments went unnoticed. But a week later, Tamil-language Sun TV, based in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, ran a story of film industry outrage.

Sun may not be an entirely disinterested party. Sun dominated Tamil television without rival for 15 years - until Khushboo came along, hosting a game show on the rival Jaya network which quickly became the most popular Tamil show.

The controversy was picked up by conservative political and community groups, who staged rowdy demonstrations and filed more than two dozen defamation and public interest suits, including one accusing her of "corrupting innocence".

"I will like to clearly say on record that I cannot possibly justify premarital sex as it is a very big sin in Islam and one which I believe will not be forgiven by Allah," Mirza said in a statement, having walked out of a sponsor's news conference when reporters continued to press her on Khushboo.

Now busy with her game show, she gained a tremendous following in Tamil movies as a heroine in sexy song-and-dance films. Adoring fans have built temples in her honour.

But it's not the first time she has been embroiled in a scandal in deeply conservative India. In a bid to breathe life into her Hindi film career, she once appeared on the cover of a film magazine kissing another actress - one of India's first public shots of women kissing.

"In a state which has one of the highest rates of female foeticide and disparity in male-female literacy rates, talking of protecting womanhood is a sham," its newspaper, Organiser, said.

"If womanhood is the issue, the protesters should have trained their guns on vulgar movies ... and artists like M.F. Hussain, who has done a series of nude paintings of Hindu goddesses," it added, referring to India's leading international painter, whose works sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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