The actor Richard Gere yesterday became the latest celebrity to become embroiled in the row over the spread of HIV/Aids in India when rightwing campaigners accused him of getting his figures wrong, and of being "snide" and "insidious".

The 53-year-old Buddhist - a frequent visitor to the Indian hill station of Dharamsala, where his friend the Dalai Lama lives - visited a home for HIV/Aids patients in New Delhi yesterday.

After staff daubed a red tilak or Hindu mark on his forehead, Mr Gere announced that he was donating $50,000 (£31,000) for a new facility for HIV-positive women and children.

"This country could be destroyed in a matter of 10 years by a disease that nobody cares about," he said.

But the actor's philanthropic gesture was overshadowed by a row over an article Mr Gere wrote in last week's Times of India.

In it, he alluded to a recent CIA report, which said that between 20 million and 25 million Indians were likely to be HIV positive by 2008 - a figure at odds with the Indian government's estimates.

Indian officials claim four million Indians are HIV positive, and say the problem has "stabilised".

"We are extremely concerned at the manner in which one foreign celebrity after another is choosing to ignore Indian ground realities to highlight instead the CIA estimates of an immense Aids crisis in this country," Purushothaman Mulloli, a conservative Indian Aids campaigner said.

The actor had launched a "relentless and hysterical attack" against the Indian government's credibility and was guilty of spreading "insidious, frightening propaganda," he added, in an open letter to Mr Gere.

The row is reminiscent of the treatment that Bill Gates received in India last month. India's health minister, Shatrugan Sinha, accused Mr Gates of "spreading panic", after the Microsoft chairman gave $100m for Aids prevention in India while citing the same CIA report.

Asked by the Guardian yesterday whether he was "snide and insidious", Gere replied: "The argument over numbers is irrelevant. We are talking about large numbers of people. There is nothing snide about the suffering of our brothers and sisters."

After touring the home, Gere went to meet the Dalai Lama at a convention in New Delhi.

"Gere doesn't come across as a celebrity," Anjali Gopalan, the director of the Naz Foundation, which will run the new care home, said last night.

"He is one of the few men I have met who is really grounded and spiritual."