Bollywood has rallied behind Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur, even as photographs of them in an intimate position have become the talk of the town.

While defending the right to privacy of celebrities, actor-MPs displayed mixed feelings on the entire episode in which a reporter allegedly filmed the lip-locked couple secretly with a mobile phone camera to yield images that have grabbed millions of TV viewers' eyeballs.

Samajwadi Party MP Jayaprada also talked of the need for a law to prevent invasion of privacy.

"It is not right to harm the dignity and confidence of any person, let alone a celebrity," said popular actor-turned-Congress MP Govinda, who described Kareena as a "very fine girl" and very good artiste.

Leading Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day carried the lip-lock photographs of the couple, prompting Kareena to slap a defamation suit seeking Rs. 200 million ($4.5 million) in damages from its publishers.

Alleging the images were morphed, Kareena said the newspaper claimed the video from which the photographs were derived had been shot while she was in a Mumbai restaurant, but she was shooting at the time at Ooty in Tamil Nadu.

Govinda, who has acted in many films with Kareena's elder sister Karisma, rallied by the young actress' flat denial that she was the girl in the explicit images.

"She belongs to the respectable Kapoor family. If she is saying the images are false, then it must be true," Govinda felt

He reiterated that it was not proper for anyone to hurt an artiste's dignity and confidence, and a woman's honour.

"If it is by consent and done aesthetically, it can be beautiful. Otherwise such a thing can be ugly."

Holding that "Kareena is not a girl like this", Jayaprada also maintained that public figures needed to maintain decorum as they were idolised by the youth.

"I don't want to comment on this, but both for the media and for public figures, they should maintain decorum in their behaviour in public as it affects the younger generation," she felt.

"I think it is very unfair, the stars' personal life should not be exposed like this," according to director Madhur Bhandarkar.

Said actor Kamal Hassan: "Stars must take care of themselves. You cannot blame the media all the time."