Angelina Jolie’s racist bodyguards were arrested on Thursday for passing derogatory statements and racial slurs against parents of school children in Mumbai, India.
The confrontation cropped up at the Anjuman-e-Islam school Mumbai, where Jolie and Pitt along with their associates were shooting for the Daniel Pearl biopic ‘A Mighty Heart.’
Jolie’s three bodyguards acknowledged as 47-year-old Thomas McAdam, 35-year-old Robert Dunn, and 50-year-old Michale Brett allegedly manhandled and passed racial slurs to the parents when they tried to enter the school to collect their kids. They called them ‘bloody Indians’.
Three of them were arrested by the local police and produced in court but were released on bail of about US $600 each. Court had ordered them not to leave India for a week and report to the police everyday.
On the other hand Jolie and co-star Brad Pitt countenance their security men and blamed the unpleasant incident on the paparazzi.
Jolie in a statement, referring to her adopted children, Ethiopian toddler Zahara and Cambodian four-year-old Maddox, said:
It is not surprising that the press involved failed to mention their share of the responsibility in the chaos. As for this horrible rumor that someone referred to a local man as a ‘bloody Indian,’ let me say this: I would never work with anyone that was derogatory towards another man’s race. My family is of mixed race.
According to Mumbai police Chief A.N Roy, the production team had not sought police permission to shoot at the location, which is necessary. ‘While for earlier and some future film shoots, police permission was sought and granted by us, no permission had been sought for Thursday’s event,’ he said.
In an interview to an Indian television channel, Pitt said that he is ‘horrified’ that members of his team were branded racists. Pitt clarified that he ardently want to establish the message conveyed by his film and the fact that he has a multi-racial family is enough to clarify the outlook he and his family holds.
