Oprah Winfrey's guards in scuffle with Indian journalists

By Alka Pande

LUCKNOW (Reuters) - American talk-show host Oprah Winfrey's surprise visit to a temple town in Uttar Pradesh was tainted on Thursday by a scuffle between her private security guards and local journalists.

Television showed images of a burly security guard shoving a journalist in Vrindavan, one of India's biggest religious towns and considered to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna.

Winfrey, 57, is on a week-long visit to India and was at a centre for child widows on Thursday when the incident took place.

"Oprah Winfrey was in one of the ashrams where the widows stay. Journalists wanted to go in, but were refused entry," Superintendent of Police for Mathura region, Prem Gautam, told Reuters.

"They had an argument, but it was all sorted," he added.

A local reporter of the Press Trust of India news agency, Vijay Kumar Arya Vidyarthi, told Reuters that Winfrey had gone to Mathura and the adjoining town of Vrindavan to film the lives of child widows, abandoned by their families.

He said Winfrey's security guards were angry with reporters who climbed a wall to film the star, and one cameraman was "manhandled." In response the journalist pelted stones at the men.

"The American bouncer pushed and manhandled a cameraman and pushed others," Vidyarthi told Reuters.

Vidyarthi said that the situation may have been avoided had the organisers provided prior information of Winfrey's engagement to the police.

Winfrey, who is scheduled to speak at the Jaipur Literature Festival, arrived in Mumbai on Monday.