Saif’s assailant arrested after 70 hours from Thane hideout
Accused Mohammed Aliyan who attacked Saif Ali Khan at his Bandra upscale apartment was arrested from Maharashtra’s Thane early Sunday morning near the Hiranandani Estate, Kasarvadavali.
At first he identified himself as Vijay Das due to fear of getting caught. He used to work as a housekeeping staff at a bar in Thane.
Saif Ali Khan was stabbed multiple times and sustained injuries on his neck and near the spine.
The 54-year-old actor was rushed to the city’s Lilavati Hospital in an autorickshaw where he underwent emergency surgery. A 2.5-inch piece of the blade was removed from his spine after a five-hour-long surgery.
As per doctors treating him Saif Is recovering well.
Earlier Saturday, a suspect – identified as 31-year-old Aakash Kailash Kannojia from Mumbai – was detained at Chhattisgarh’s Durg railway station.
Officials said he was “caught from the Mumbai-Howrah Jnaneswari Express on the lead of the Mumbai Police.”
According to RPF officials around” 2 pm, when the train reached Durg, the suspect who was sitting in the general compartment – deboarded and was immediately taken into custody. He is being interrogated.
The Mumbai Police had sent the suspect’s photo, train number and location to the RPF, after which he was caught. The man was travelling without a ticket.
Sources claimed the detained passenger looked like the suspect in the actor-stabbing case.
Saif Ali Khan was attacked when he was with his family members Kareena Kapoor Khan, and their two sons, four-year-old Jeh and eight-year-old Taimur – at his residence in the 12-floor apartment – Satguru Sharan – in Bandra.
Eliyama Philip – a nurse caring for Jeh – and another staffer were also injured in the attack.
In a statement to the police, Ms Philip said she was the first to spot the intruder – who was between 35-40 years old – at Mr Khan’s apartment on the 11th floor.
She said the knife-wielding attacker also demanded a ransom of Rs 1 crore.
The 56-year-old said she had been woken by noises in the house around 2 am – three hours after Jehangir had been put to bed. She told the police the attacker first entered Jeh’s room.
She claimed she saw the bathroom door ajar and the light on and first assumed that Ms Kapoor Khan was checking in on her younger son.
“… then she went back to sleep but, again, she realised something was wrong. So she woke up again and saw a man come out of the bathroom and go into the boy’s room.
She quickly got up and went to Jeh’s room. The attacker then put his finger near his mouth and said “Don’t make any noise, nobody will go out” in Hindi,” Ms Philip said.
When she rushed to pick up Jeh, the man – who was armed with a wooden stick and a long Hexa blade – ran towards her and tried attacking her.
She tried to block the attack by putting her hand forward, but the blade hit her near the wrists of both her hands and on the middle finger of her left hand.
“At that time, she asked him, “What does he want ?”. Then he said, he wants money.” How much? Then he said in English, “One crore”,” Ms Philip recalled in her police statement.
Hearing Eliyama Philip’s scream, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan rushed out of their room. When Mr Khan asked the intruder what he wanted, he attacked him with a wooden object and the hexa blade, Ms Philip said.
“Saif Sir somehow managed to get away from him and we all ran out of the room and pulled the door of the room,” she said, adding that everyone then went to the upper floor of their home.
The intruder later managed to escape.
According to police sources, there was no sign of forced entry, nor was anyone captured on CCTV entering the premises in the two hours before the attack.
Police sources said the intruder – who entered the actor’s home to commit burglary – had scaled the wall of an adjacent compound to enter the premises.
He was reportedly familiar with the layout of the building and took the stairs on the rear side of the building to reach the floor where the actor lives. He then entered Mr Saif’s home through the fire escape.
Mumbai Police had formed about 30 teams to arrest the accused, who was also captured on CCTV cameras in the building.
News Edit KV Raman
