Saif Ali Khan Attack: Yet Another Suspect

An image of the  piece of knife that was lodged in the back of Saif Ali Khan, and which narrowly missed his spine, made it to the media and it indicated how vicious the attack had been. It was not  a tip but a large section of the top half of the weapon. The knife would have to be driven with force to have embedded like that. Early Sunday, a man was arrested from Thane. He was hiding in the bushes with a sickle. A news agency reported a high ranking police officer saying that it was an arrest.  This is however the the third such suspect that they have had.  

Before that on Saturday, a suspect was detained in Madhya Pradesh. CCTV images during the night of the attack had shown a man with a backpack traversing the stairs in Khan’s building on that night. Other CCTVs, one in Bandra station which is the nearest one to the residence , and then at a mobile phone shop in Dadar, from where long distance trains operate, also showed what might have been the suspect.

His image was circulated and the Railway Protection Force found a person who matched the description in Chhattisgarh. He was apprehended and a team from Mumbai police rushed  there and took him into custody. Before that the police had detained someone else and despite the media widely reporting that the culprit had been apprehended, it was later found to be someone who had nothing to do with the attack. He too was released.

An extraordinary number of police teams are on the case, as many as 30 going by some reports. Even a former encounter specialist, part of that group which used to gun down gangsters, has been made part of the investigation, even though the involvement of the underworld has been ruled out.  With the entire country wondering how a famous film start living in one of the hippest localities of Mumbai in a building manned by security and CCTVs could so easily have been the victim of such a crime, the pressure on the police to find the attacker has grown with every passing minute.

Fortunately, Khan himself seems to be recovering well. He is out of the Intensive Care Unit and in a regular ward at the hospital. The injuries were severe but narrowly escaped being life threatening. The psychological trauma is another matter altogether. In a statement to the police, his wife Kareena Kapoor said that she had witnessed the whole thing and had been so ’terrified’ that her sister had to take her to her house. Khan himself meanwhile was taken to the hospital in a autorickshaw by a domestic help and accompanied by his little son.

attackBollywoodCCTV FootageChhattisgarhKareena KapoorSaif Ali Khanstabbedsuspect