BOMBAY, 17 July 2005 — Popular Indian actor Salman Khan has denied any links to local gangsters and dismissed as “absurd” supposedly wiretapped phone conversations in which he allegedly boasts of such ties to actress Aishwarya Rai.

“This whole thing is so absurd,” Salman told The Times of India newspaper in an interview published yesterday. “I heard the tape and I could not recognize my own voice.”

He said the man on the tape sounded drunk and that the woman’s voice “is also most certainly not” Aishwarya’s.

Salman’s denial comes a day after dozens of right-wing protesters shouted slogans outside cinemas across the country demanding action against him after transcripts of the supposed phone calls appeared in the Hindustan Times newspaper.

The protests temporarily delayed the screening of Salman’s new film “Maine Pyar Kyon Kiya” (“Why Did I Fall In Love”), but the movie, in which he plays the comic lead, later ran to packed houses.

The newspaper published the alleged transcripts on Thursday and said Bombay police recorded the phone calls during a 2001 probe of alleged mafia financing of films in Bollywood, India’s prolific movie industry centered in Bombay.

Bombay police have said they will check the tapes’ authenticity.

The allegations were widely reported by the Indian media, with television channels playing the tapes and newspapers across the country publishing excerpts.

Salman was said to have used expletives and named mobsters, while Aishwarya warned him to stop talking “nonsense” because his phone could be tapped.

In the interview published yesterday, Salman dismissed the allegations as “ridiculous.” “This is the most absurd charge anyone could level against me ... it must be a sick joke,” he said.

Three years ago, police submitted 71 tapes to a Bombay court in a crackdown on organized crime in Bollywood. Police said the phone taps of conversations between a mob boss, movie financiers, actors and directors were recorded in 2000-01. The tapes were part of police evidence that helped convict India’s top movie financier, Bharat Shah, in 2003 for failing to inform police about mob activities in Bollywood.

Shah was sentenced to a year in prison, but walked free because he had spent 15 months in jail awaiting trial. He was acquitted of charges directly linking him to organized crime. Another film producer and an assistant were sentenced to six years’ in prison for that offense. Police say crime bosses threaten film stars to join mob-supported projects, extort money from filmmakers and offer producers illicit high-interest loans.

In the Times of India interview, Salman said gangsters had threatened him in the recent past. “I was threatened by the underworld and therefore I was given police protection until 2002. The police too know it and therefore there is no question of me being involved with them,” Salman said.

“My initial response on reading media reports was of shock. The media is desperately looking for sensational stories to sell itself in a competitive market and I was the convenient fall guy.”

His lawyer, Dipesh Mehta, has threatened to sue the Hindustan Times for publishing transcripts from the tapes and attributing the comments to Salman.

In the southern city of Hyderabad, activists of the Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party’s youth wing attacked a theater screening “Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya”. Police used force to disperse the supporters of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha when they attacked the Ramakrishna theater at Abids in the heart of the city.

Shouting slogans against the actor, they stormed the theater, tore film posters and damaged hoardings. Policemen, who had rushed to the scene, caned the protesters and chased them away.

After the attack, police tightened security at more than a dozen other theaters screening the film.