Mumbai:
The man who stabbed Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan – at his home in Mumbai’s posh Bandra West neighbourhood early Thursday morning – demanded a ransom of Rs 1 crore, police sources told NDTV this evening, citing a statement by a member of Mr Khan’s domestic staff. The staffer – a nurse caring for Mr Khan’s four-year-old son Jehangir, said the knife-wielding attacker first entered the boy’s room.
Three people – Saif Ali Khan, 54, the nurse, and another staffer – were injured in the attack that followed the demand. Mr Khan was stabbed six times, resulting in injuries to his spinal cord. He was rushed to the city’s Lilavati Hospital – by his son Ibrahim in an auto-rickshaw after his car was delayed.
The actor’s medical condition is now stable, doctors have said. Follow LIVE UPDATES HERE.
Mr Khan and his family – wife and fellow actor Kareena Kapoor Khan and their sons – live in an apartment – spread over four floors – in a twelve-storey building in Bandra West.
READ | Saif Ali Khan’s Attacker Seen On CCTV In Building Staircase
Earlier today police sources told NDTV the attacker – who was looking to burgle the apartment – entered the compound via an adjacent. He was spotted in CCTV footage from a stairwell in the actor’s home; he can be seen in a t-shirt and jeans, with an orange scarf on his shoulder.
The nurse caring for Jehangir, Eliyama Phillipes, who has been with the Khan household for four years, was the first to spot the intruder. She told the police she had been woken by noises in the house early Thursday morning; this was around 2 am, she said, three hours after Jehangir had been put to bed.
She said she saw the bathroom door ajar and the light on, and first assumed Kareena Kapoor Khan was checking in on her younger son. “… then I went back to sleep but, again, I realised something was wrong. So I woke up again and saw a man come out of the bathroom and go into the boy’s room.”
At this point she confronted him – he responded by pointed his finger at himself and said, in Hindi, ‘don’t make a sound’ – and he demanded the Rs 1 crore.
And when she tried to fight him off, the 56-year-old suffered injuries to her wrists and hands. According to her statement, she then screamed, which alerted Mr Khan who also tried to fight off the intruder.
READ | Maid Saw Intruder, Screamed, Saif Fought Him: What Happened?
He was stabbed six times in that fight, and a two-and-a-half inch fragment of the knife broke off and lodged in his spine. Doctors said he sustained “severe injuries to the thoracic spinal cord… two other deep wounds on his left hand and one on his neck were repaired by plastic surgery…”
READ | “Stabbed In Spine, Neck, And Hand”: Doctors Say Saif Out Of Danger
The third person injured was a maid called Geeta.
The police have registered a case under sections of robbery, trespassing, and “grievous hurt caused while committing lurking house-trespass”. The suspect has not yet been arrested.
The attack has thrown up tough questions about the response of the security guards on duty at the high-profile building, and how the intruder managed to enter the actor’s home undetected.
It has also triggered a predictable political squabble, with the BJP-led state government under fire from the opposition and members of the film fraternity. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis – who is also the Home Minister – called the attack ‘unfortunate’, but denied talk of Mumbai being unsafe.
READ | “Mumbai Not Unsafe”: Devendra Fadnavis After Saif Ali Khan Attack
This followed jabs from Shiv Sena (ex-Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s faction) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi, who declared, “If celebrities are not safe, who in Mumbai is?”
Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also joined the list of opposition figures targeting the BJP on this issue.
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