Bollywood actress Monica Bedi, who was detained in Portugal in 2002 for using a fake passport, appealed Saturday for the right to asylum in Portugal, saying in a newspaper interview that she fears she will be tortured if returned to her native India. "I will certainly be tortured. Life does not exist for me in India. People want to kill me, they have carried out protests demanding that I be hung," she told the weekly newspaper Expresso.
Bedi was arrested in Lisbon in September 2002 along with her companion Abu Salem, one of India's most wanted men who is accused of masterminding a series of bombings that ripped through Mumbai's commercial district in March 1993 killing more than 250 people.
Bedi, who has starred in 30 movies, has completed a two-year jail sentence in Portugal but has been kept behind bars at a Lisbon jail while her extradition case was processed. She told Expresso she only discovered Salem's true identity after she married him in a Muslim ceremony in 2000, the same year she met him.