Rajesh Sharma wants one thing cleared up before anything else: nothing happened to him on Prabhas's film set.

The actor, hospitalised in Kolkata in July with a serious leg infection and high fever, has now denied that his health scare had anything to do with shooting Fauzi in Hyderabad. Speaking to NDTV, Sharma said the whole insect bite angle that circulated at the time simply isn't true.

"It's false news. Nothing happened on Prabhas's film set. Neither Prabhas nor the unit was responsible in any way. They are nice people. Nothing happened in Hyderabad while I was shooting there," Sharma said.

So where did the story come from? Director Sudipa Chatterjee, a close friend of Sharma's, had posted around the time of his hospitalisation suggesting he may have been bitten by a suspected poisonous insect or spider while filming Fauzi. That post got deleted soon after, but not before it did the rounds. Sharma isn't holding it against her.

"She's a good friend. Out of concern, she posted that. But she was wrong informed," he said.

What actually happened

According to Sharma, the real culprit was a skin problem on his right leg that he'd been living with for a long time. It's the kind of thing you ignore until you can't. He admits as much, saying he didn't take it seriously enough early on. By the time he was back in Kolkata, that old condition had turned into an infection, and it got serious fast, partly because his diabetes levels were running very high at the same time.

Treatment is done now. Sharma says he's recovering and feeling hopeful about getting back to work, possibly within a week.

That's good news for Haiwaan, the Priyadarshan-directed remake of the Mohanlal film Oppam, which stars Saif Ali Khan and Akshay Kumar and is set to release on September 11. Where Sharma fits into that release timeline given his recovery window isn't spelled out, but a week's gap between his stated return to shooting and the film's release date suggests his part in Haiwaan was likely wrapped or nearly wrapped before this health scare took over the news cycle.

What's clear is that Prabhas and the Fauzi unit have been cleared of any involvement, at least by the person at the centre of the story. Whether Fauzi's own production timeline was affected by Sharma's hospitalisation in July, and whether he still has scenes left to shoot for that film, remains unaddressed. For now, the correction stands on its own: an old ailment, bad timing, and a friend's post that ran ahead of the facts.