New Delhi:

As actor Saif Ali Khan recovers, mentally and physically, from a shocking knife attack during a burglary attempt at his Mumbai home, he faces a legal fight over his family’s property in Bhopal, estimated to be worth around Rs 15,000 crore.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently lifted the stay on his ancestral property and the actor may lose it to the government under the Enemy Property Act, 1968.

A Legal Headache For Saif Ali Khan

The actor’s family owns multiple properties in Bhopal, including the Flag Staff House, where he spent his childhood, Noor-Us-Sabah Palace, Dar-Us-Salam, Bungalow of Habibi, Ahmedabad Palace and Kohefiza Property, among others. Mr Khan inherited this property from his grandmother Sajida Sultan. Sajida Sultan was the daughter of Bhopal’s last Nawab Hamidullah Khan. Hamidullah Khan’s eldest daughter, Abida Sultan, migrated to Pakistan in 1950. Her sister, Sajida, stayed on in India and married Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi, the Nawab of Pataudi and Mr Khan’s grandfather. Sajida inherited her father’s property and this passed on to Mr Khan. In 2015, however, it was declared that Abida was the legal heir to her father’s assets and since she migrated to Pakistan, they can be acquired by the government under the Enemy Property Act. A 2019 order recognised Sajida as the heir and brought relief to the family.

But the latest order is a fresh headache for the family and Mr Khan and his mother and veteran actor Sharmila Tagore must navigate this to reclaim their family property. For clarity, the Enemy Property Act allows the Centre to claim properties owned by individuals who migrated to Pakistan post-Partition.

‘A Nawab With No Inheritance’

In a 2019 interview with Midday, Mr Khan had said that he had buy back the Pataudi Palace in Gurugram after the death of his father and ace cricketer Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi. “When my father died, it was rented to the Neemrana Group of Hotels.” He said that the hotel group told him that if he wanted it back, he would have to pay “lots of money”. “I then earned and… so even the house that’s supposedly inherited has been earned back through money from films,” he said. “There was nothing, there is some history and culture, beautiful photographs and of course, some land and it has been a privileged upbringing, but there has been no inheritance,” the actor said.

The actor has said he was born in Mumbai, but subsequently lived in Bhopal, Pataudi (Gurugram) and Delhi. Mr Khan said during the interview that it was his grandmother, Sajida, who was looking after the family’s properties in Bhopal. “When she got old, we moved to Delhi to live with her. Nice, big old house in Delhi which she had been given for her lifetime. in return for land and property and all those kind of deals that these old families had made with the Indian government.”

Saif’s Chat With NDTV When He Became Nawab

NDTV caught up with Mr Khan in October 2011, shortly after his father died and he became the titular Nawab of Pataudi. Speaking to veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta in the popular show Walk The Talk, Mr Khan spoke about his father’s death due to an acute lung infection. “It’s possibly one of the most disturbing and painful ways to go. It seems to have a mind of its own, this disease. It can either stall or accelerate, we don’t know anything about it,” he said.

During the same interview, Mr Khan had explained how his family approached their nawab status. “My grandfather was more famous for getting a hundred against the Australians and then saying he doesn’t want to play bodyline. So gentlemanly act of genuine chivalry.” Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi is the only Test cricketer to have played for both India and England.

“My father was, again, less as a nawab, of course there is his lungi and kurta and his liking for classical music,” he said.

Saif Ali Khan with parents Tiger Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore and sisters Soha and Saba

Saif Ali Khan’s ‘Nawabzade’ anecdote

In the same interview, Mr Khan had said films show nawabs with a negative connotation and narrated an awkward incident during the shooting of the 2000 film Kya Kehna. “There was a dialogue in which one of the chaps catches me because I am not being very nice to his sister and says, haraamzada (meaning bastard). There were some sensor problems and we had to dub over haraamzada. The producer, director said ‘just say nawabzaada, it’s the same thing’. I said, ‘really?’ It’s quite funny.

Mr Khan also remembered his father’s sense of humour. “There was that story about when he dislocated his shoulder and he was in hospital and they were trying to put it back. He was shouting in pain. The doctors said to him, ‘Tiger, there is a woman who has given birth to twins and she is not making as much noise as you are.’. He said, ‘tell her to try putting them back’.

Mumbai:

Bangladesh national Shariful Islam Shehzad, who allegedly broke into actor Saif Ali Khan’s home to commit robbery and stabbed him multiple times during a fight, wanted to flee to his home country after the incident, police have found.

According to police sources, Shariful had planned to first travel to Howrah near Kolkata and then proceed to Bangladesh when he realised that police were after him. He tried to arrange for a train ticket to Howrah, but travel agents demanded more money because of the short notice. Before he could get his hands on a ticket, Shariful was arrested from Thane.

Cops are now tracking down all the travel agents he spoke to question them as part of the investigation into the high-profile case. The actor, who has suffered six stab injuries in the shocking attack, returned home yesterday after he was discharged from the hospital. Doctors, it is learnt, have advised him bed rest for a week and asked him not to receive any visitor now to prevent infection.

Cops Piece Together Sequence Of Events

Mumbai Police, which was left red-faced after the late-night attack in an area home to several celebrities, is going all out to get to the root of the case at the earliest. A police team took Shariful to the actor’s Bandra home yesterday to recreate the crime.

Police have found that on Wednesday night, the intruder scaled wall of the compound to approach the 12-storeyed building the actor lives in. He found the security guards of the building asleep. He then used the back staircase and air-conditioning duct to enter Mr Khan’s home through a window in one of the bathrooms. Shariful has told police that he had removed his shoes and kept them in his bag to prevent any noise. He had also switched off his phone.

Mr Khan and his house helps managed to lock Shariful into a room after the stabbing, but he escaped through the air-conditioning duct and fled down the stairs.

Police have found Shariful’s face cover from the room of Mr Khan’s younger son Jahangir, where the actor and the intruder had clashed. This face cover is being sent for forensic testing.

What Happened That Night

Eliyama Philip, a nanny for Saif’s sons, has told the police that she was the first to spot the intruder. The 56-year-old has said she was woken up by some noises around 2 am. She saw the bathroom door open and the light on and assumed that Kareena Kapoor Khan was checking on Jahangir or Jeh.

“… 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. I 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 has said. “When I rushed to pick up Jeh, the man, armed with a wooden stick and a long Hexa blade. ran towards me and tried attacking me, she said.

“I tried to block the attack by putting my hand forward, but the blade hit me near the wrists of both my hands and on the middle finger of my left hand,” she said. “At that time, I asked him, ‘What do you want?’. He said, ‘I want money.’ I asked, ‘How much do you want?’ He said in English, ‘one crore’,” Ms Philip has said in her statement.

Hearing Ms Philip 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 escaped, she has said.

How Accused Was Caught

Police formed 30 teams to track down the accused. The cops scanned CCTV footage of the building and noticed the suspect leaving after the attack. Several hours of footage from across the city were scanned to find a match. During this tenuous exercise, cops found footage from DN Nagar in Andheri. They saw the suspect getting off a bike and tracked down the two-wheeler using its number.

Parallelly, following local intelligence inputs, police zeroed in on a rented accommodation at Koliwada in Worli, where the accused lived with three others. A police team questioned the people living there. They managed to get the suspect’s name and related information. Police also got his phone number and used it to track his location. The accused had been hiding in a thicket on a deserted road in Thane. Police surrounded him from all sides and then took him into custody.

After his arrest, they found that he was a Bangladesh national who had illegally crossed into India months back.

Saif Ali Khan returned home from hospital

Saif Now Back Home

The 54-year-old actor returned home after spending five days at Lilavati Hospital, where he was admitted after the chilling attack. Mr Khan was captured waving to the media and his fans before entering home last afternoon. The actor suffered six stab injuries, one of them on his back. The knife, doctors have said, missed his spinal cord by just 2 mm. His spinal fluid had started leaking and a surgery was done to fix that. The actor also suffered injuries on his face and arm and has undergone plastic surgery. Doctors have said he is recovering well but advised him rest for now. Mr Khan is expected to record a statement with police now that he is back home.

Durg:

A man who was detained in Chhattisgarh’s Durg railway station in connection with the January 16 Saif Ali Khan attack case was released on Sunday, a police official said.

Mumbai police, earlier in the day, informed that it had arrested a 30-year-old man from Thane near the metropolis in the case.

“The man detained from the Mumbai LTT-Kolkata Shalimar Jnaneshwari Express at Durg station on Saturday afternoon was just a suspect and he has been released after inquiry. He was kept at the RPF post at Durg station through the night and released this morning,” the police official said.

“We can detain anyone for inquiry. We had been insisting he was just a suspect. There has been no mistake on our part. We had told the media that we would share authentic details but some went ahead and declared him an accused,” Mumbai police sub inspector Pradeep Fude told reporters at Dug railway station.

Incidentally, RPF officials here had on Saturday said the man was detained after his photo was sent to them by Mumbai police.

A Mumbai police team led by Funde had arrived here last night to question the detained man.

Mumbai police on Sunday said it had arrested alleged attacker Mohammad Shariful Islam Shehzad, a Bangladeshi national who had illegally entered India and changed his name to Bijoy Das.

As per preliminary probe, he had entered the Bollywood star’s home, in Satguru Sharan building in Bandra, in the early hours of January 16 with the intention of theft, police said in the metropolis.

Khan (54) was stabbed multiple times in the attack, after which he underwent a five-hour surgery in nearby Lilavati Hospital. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Mumbai:

The manhunt to arrest the intruder who attacked actor Saif Ali Khan in his Bandra residence on Thursday is still ongoing, with the Mumbai Police recording statements of over 30 people. One person has been detained for questioning.

Mumbai:

A nurse caring for Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor’s younger son Jehangir (Jeh), Eliyama Philips – who first encountered the intruder that stabbed Mr Khan – has described the accused as a 35 to 40 years old man with a dark complexion. According to Ms Philps, the attacker has a slim build and is approximately 5 feet 5 inches tall.

At the time of the incident, the attacker was wearing dark-coloured pants and a shirt with a cap on his head, she told the police.

“If I see the said man again, I will recognise him,” Ms Philips said.

Saif Ali Khan and his family members – wife and actor Kareena Kapoor, and their two sons Jeh and Taimur – were in the house when the attacker entered the 12th-floor apartment during the early hours of Thursday. Mr Khan’s five house helpers were also inside the house. According to Ms Philip, she was the first to spot the intruder on the 11th floor.

“I saw the bathroom door ajar and the light on…At first I assumed Kareena Kapoor was checking in on her son. I went back to sleep but soon realised something was wrong. I got up again to check when I saw a man come out of the bathroom and go into Jeh and Taimur’s room,” the nanny narrated.

At this point, she confronted the attacker, following which he demanded Rs 1 crore.

“I 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” in Hindi…When I rushed to pick up Jeh, the intruder who was armed with a wooden stick and a long Hexa blade, ran towards me and tried attacking me,” she said.

Awakened by her screams, Mr Khan rushed to his son’s room. When he tried to confront the intruder, he was attacked multiple times. The actor’s spinal fluid leaked out after shards of the attacker’s knife lodged into his spine. According to the doctors at the Lilavati Hospital – where Mr Khan is undergoing treatment – they repaired the spinal injury and performed plastic surgeries on the actor’s hand and neck.

Also Read | Nannies Fought Attacker, Tried To Lock Him Up: Tense 30 Minutes At Saif’s Home

What initial investigation revealed

According to the initial investigation, the attacker possibly sneaked inside Mr Khan’s house at some point earlier in the night. The suspect was last seen running away on the sixth floor of the building and was not captured in the lobby’s CCTV cameras while entering or exiting. After the sixth floor, the suspect was nowhere to be seen, nor was he caught exiting through the main entrance.

Officials suspect that the accused was familiar with the layout of the building and used the shaft and stairs to reach the 11th floor. 

After the incident, the attacker immediately ran from the house and was later spotted near Bandra railway station. He likely took the first local train in the morning, officials said.

The police have registered a case under sections of robbery, trespassing, and “grievous hurt caused while committing lurking house-trespass”. 20 teams have been formed to arrest the accused. The police have also recovered a 2.5-inch portion of a knife that was taken out from Mr Khan’s spine.

Earlier today,  a suspect was taken into custody after a massive manhunt that involved gathering technical data and police informers spreading out across Mumbai. Visuals showed the man being brought to the Bandra police station. However, it is not yet confirmed if the suspect is the same man who attacked Mr Khan.

Actor Saif Ali Khan, who underwent surgeries on Thursday after an attacker stabbed him at his Mumbai home, is out of danger and recovering well, doctors at the Lilavati Hospital said. The police have formed 20 teams to arrest the accused.