Thaindian News

London, Jan. 18 (ANI): Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan was evacuated from a hotel here on Monday following what police said was a suspected bomb explosion.

A tweet from Bachchan said “Emergency in my hotel in London. Everyone evacuated out on the street in biting cold. Suspecting explosion in next door. Managed to get into a car and driving away from site of emergency. Police not allowing anyone near.”

The tweet came even as controversy surrounds Bachchan’s cold war with the International Indian Film Academy, the organiser of the annual IIFA awards which has decided to do away with the post of brand ambassador, a position Bachchan occupied for a decade.

Tweeting from London a day and a half before the IIFA holds a news conference in Toronto, where the next IIFA is to be held, Bachchan wrote: “We are not coming to IIFA… IIFA said our services are not required!!”

He added: “It’s not me… it’s the organisers of IIFA that do not want me in Toronto… Sri Lanka was the same.”

The Canadian city of Toronto is the scheduled venue for this year’s IIFA awards, slated from June 23 to June 25, 2011.

A source in Wizcraft, the event management company behind the IIFA, said the battle lines had been drawn when Bachchan refused to participate in last year’s awards ceremony, held in Colombo, thus failing to honour his contract as brand ambassador.

The Bachchans had backed out after members of the South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce demanded they not attend the event in a country where a large number of Tamils were killed during anti-LTTE operations.

Some Mumbai-based Tamils had protested before Bachchan’s home in Juhu.

Film industry sources, however, said the reason the Bachchans skipped the Colombo ceremony was the IIFA’s decision not to premiere Mani Ratnam’s Raavan, which featured Abhishek Bachchan, at the event.

The annual IIFA event had always been a showcase for the Bachchan family since the superstar officially became its brand ambassador.

Bachchan had, therefore, expected the Colombo event to give a kick-start to Abhishek’s big release last year.

Ratnam later argued that the film wasn’t ready, but industry insiders say Wizcraft had refused to screen Raavan after the pro-LTTE lobby got the entire Tamil film industry to boycott the Colombo show. (ANI)