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George Joseph in New York
Top Malayalam actress Samyuktha Verma and five other Indians travelling with her from Chicago to New York were detained and then released at NY's LaGuardia airport on Wednesday on suspicion of being terrorists.
All of them were part of a troupe that was in the United States for entertainment programmes organised by Malayalam associations.
The troupe was travelling from Dallas and had taken a flight at 1 pm on Tuesday that landed in Chicago and then took off for NYC.
They were flying an American Trans Air flight when a co-passenger, fifteen minutes before landing, reported their 'suspicious behavior' of exchanging notes and changing seats.
The flight crew alerted aviation authorities and five minutes later Flight 204 was escorted to LaGuardia by two F-16 fighter jets.
Verma and her companions -- including her father, mother, younger sister, singer Biju Narayanan and comedian Jayaraj Warrior -- were questioned and later, after organisers of their show vouched for them, released.
Sources said the trouble started when Warrior started miming people. The passenger misunderstood it to be some other language and became suspicious.
Airport police and members of the joint New York Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation task force questioned the troupe and let them off after questioning at 4 am on Wednesday morning.
Appearing on WNBC TV, C Vijayan, their host in New York, said the Indians were from a performance group and may have been rehearsing or discussing their role attracting suspicion.
Verma is scheduled to perform at Show 2002 at Queens College on June 20. From July 3 to 7, she had performed at the Federation of Kerala Associations in North America convention in Chicago.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey manages the region's airports. Since the September 11 attacks, the NAADC has scrambled or diverted fighter jets about 400 times to help civilian aircraft.
Earlier, Canadian officials had detained Indian superstar Kamal Haasan too for questioning.
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