Popular film actress Kareena Kapoor Wednesday sent a legal notice to Mid-Day newspaper for publishing intimate photos that purportedly showed her kissing her actor boyfriend Shahid Kapur.

Mid-Day carried photographs of the couple on its front page, prompting Kareena and Shahid to threaten to slap a defamation suit on its publishers.

Kareena claimed the photographs were fake and that she was emotionally distraught.

The newspaper, however, said the photographs were not manipulated.

"I am completely emotionally and mentally traumatised by what has taken place. It is really terrible that a leading newspaper could do this. My lawyer will be taking legal steps," Kareena told a TV channel.

She said the newspaper had claimed the video from which the photographs were derived had been shot while she was in a restaurant, but she was in fact shooting at Ooty in Tamil Nadu at that time.

"We have received a legal notice from Kareena where she has said that Mid-Day has doctored those pictures of her kissing Shahid," tells Aakar Patel, editor of Mid-Day.

"We haven't doctored any picture. We have even got the video clippings to show that. We will carry our reply in the newspaper Thursday."

Patel said a friend of his took the pictures with a mobile camera phone in an upmarket restaurant called Rain. "My friend was sitting at a table close to them and he took the photos," he said.

"We found (Shahid) Kapur and Kareena (Kapoor) lip-locked at a party at Rain the other night," said the daily in a brief note accompanying the pictures.

Shahid Kapur, the son of veteran actor Pankaj Kapur, wondered what was the need to resort to such a stunt when he and Kareena had announced they were in a relationship.

While Kareena was reported to have claimed Rs.200 million as damages from the newspaper, Shahid sent a separate legal notice but the amount claimed by him was not immediately known.