Knee injury could trip up Shah Rukh Khan at awards show

TORONTO: A knee injury may scrub the long awaited return of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan to the Indian International Film Awards, he said Friday.

"In hospital getting my knee taped up. Feeling awful not being fully fit for IIFA," he tweeted after previously saying IIFA organizers had choreographed some easier dance steps for him to perform at the show Saturday evening.

Khan last attended the IIFA in Amsterdam in 2005, and last performed at the show a year earlier in Singapore.

On Friday, pandemonium broke out at the Royal York hotel when a crush of fans cheered the arrival of "King Khan," who has been nominated in the best actor category for his role in "My Name Is Khan."

He told a press conference: "I've taken a couple of injections and I have a commitment to my friends, and I would not let them down. I had to come here and I had to be here."

He explained that he fractured a part of the bone and "the ligament is swollen to three times the size it should be, but otherwise it's very cool."

Earlier, Salman Khan missed his debut movie production "Chillar Party" and could not make it to Toronto as he was reportedly shooting his next film "Bodyguard," a romantic action movie with Kareena Kapoor.

"I am shooting for my next ‘Bodyguard' and it is an action movie, so yes, you people won't see me there. IIFA will miss me this time," he told Indo-Asian News Service.

Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her husband Abhishek Bachchan also backed out of a performance at the three-day festival, IIFA organizers said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011