A 30-year-old Bangladeshi national, who was arrested on Sunday on charges of stabbing actor Saif Ali Khan after breaking into his house, has reportedly confessed to the crime, saying “haan, maine hi kiya hai (yes, I did it)”.
According to police sources, Mohammad Shariful Islam Shehzad was arrested from near Hiranandani Estate in Kasarvadavali in Thane, about 35 kilometres from Mr Khan’s house in Mumbai’s Bandra area. The breakthrough came after over 70 hours of an intense manhunt that was launched following the attack during a failed burglary bid in the early hours of Thursday.
After being caught, when a senior officer asked Shehzad if he was the one who had attacked Mr Khan, the accused said “haan, maine hi kiya hai“, a source said.
The police traced Shehzad to a labour camp in a forested area based on the information provided by a labour contractor.
As soon as Shehzad got a whiff that a team of 100 policemen had reached and were looking for him in Thane, the accused hid himself in the bushes in a forested area, a source said. “He was arrested after a search operation that lasted for seven hours in the city,” the source added.
Earlier in the day, senior police officer Dixit Gedam told reporters that Shehzad is a Bangladeshi national. “He does not have any Indian documents. Some things found in his possession show that he is a Bangladeshi national,” Mr Gedam said.
Police also said the accused has been living in Mumbai for the past four months and had changed his name to Bijoy Das.
Defence lawyer Sandeep D Sherkhane, however, said the case has been hyped because of the presence of Mr Khan.
Mr Sherkhane also contended that his client has been residing in the country for several years and has vital documents (for staying in the country), and that his family is also living in India.
A court remanded the accused in five-day police custody.
Fifty-four-year-old Khan suffered grievous injuries, after he was stabbed six times reportedly by Shehzad during a failed burglary attempt at the actor’s 12th floor residence in “Satguru Sharan” building in upscale Bandra. The doctors who performed an emergency surgery had removed a 2.5-inch piece of a broken knife from his spine afterwards.
If the knife had pierced 2 mm deeper, it could have caused a severe injury, the doctors had noted.
In her statement to the police, actor Kareena Kapoor Khan recalled the attack on her husband and said she saw the intruder stab him repeatedly. “The attacker was aggressive. I saw him attack Saif repeatedly…Our priority was to take Saif to the hospital,” she said.
A nurse caring for the couple’s younger son Jehangir (Jeh), Eliyama Philips – who first encountered the intruder – said the accused had demanded Rs 1 crore.
Multiple teams of the police and the crime branch worked on several inputs and analysed footage from several CCTV cameras to track down Khan’s attacker.
On Friday, a carpenter was held as he resembled the screengrab of the suspect from the CCTV footage at the actor’s building, but he was released later as he was found to have no link to the crime. A day later, a suspect was detained in Chhattisgarh’s Durg railway station but was released on Sunday.