MUMBAI: Mohammed Shariful Islam Shehzad, the Bangladeshi man accused of attacking actor Saif Ali Khan at his Bandra residence in January, was hiding for around an hour in a neighbouring building after the alleged assault, according to the charge sheet filed by the Bandra police in the case.
The police have obtained CCTV footage allegedly showing Shariful on the sixth floor of the Satguru Sharan building, where Khan stays, at 1.37 am on January 16. Around an hour later, at 2.33 am, he is seen exiting the building by jumping over the compound wall into the premises of the adjacent Bharati Villa. This was when the police were already searching for him in the Satguru Sharan premises, according to the charge sheet.
CCTV footage then shows Shariful leaving Bharati Villa at 3.37 am. At 7.04 am, he is seen at Patwardhan Garden in Bandra West, before he boards a local train from Bandra station to Dadar. The police reviewed several CCTV clips, six of which were considered crucial and are mentioned in the charge sheet.
The charge sheet also stated that Shariful was spotted in CCTV recordings of Bharati Villa and Next Avenue, buildings adjacent to Satguru Sharan, between 5 pm and 6.45 pm on January 15, hours before the alleged assault. Purportedly doing a recce of the crime scene, Shariful was seen looking towards the high-rise buildings and flats on the upper floors. The charge sheet contains statements of 48 witnesses examined by the police, including Khan and his wife Kareena Kapoor Khan.
Saif and Kareena’s statements
According to the charge sheet, Saif told the police, “On that day, I had dinner with my sons around 7.30 pm. At 10 pm, I went to my bedroom. My wife Kareena arrived home around 1.30 am as she was out for work. While we were sleeping, around 2 am, [younger son] Jeh’s nanny came to our bedroom door and shouted that a man with a knife had entered Jeh’s room.”
An altercation then broke out between Saif and Shariful, when the assaulter embraced him from the front, the actor told the police. The accused then allegedly stabbed him in the neck, back, hands, chest, and legs holding knives in both hands.
When their nanny, Geeta, tried to restrain the accused, the accused allegedly attacked her as well. Saif then pushed the accused, causing him to fall down. Saif and Geeta then left the room and locked it from the outside. Later, when they searched for the accused, they could not find him. According to the police, Shariful exited the house via the bathroom in Jeh’s bedroom, the same way he came in.
Kareena, in her statement to the police, said that when she and Saif rushed into Jeh’s room, they saw a man in a black t-shirt standing next to their son’s bed. Saif asked the man who he was and what he wanted, before the intruder attacked him. To stop the attack, Saif embraced him but the intruder continued stabbing him. “I then yelled at [caretaker] Eliamma to take Jeh out of the bedroom,” said Kareena in her statement.
Kareena, Eliamma and Jeh then went to the 12th floor, before Saif came a few minutes later with blood all over his kurta. Kareena then saw him looking for something to attack the intruder with, but she suggested he rush to the hospital as he was bleeding. Taimur then insisted that he go with Saif to the hospital. A staff member, Hari, and Taimur then accompanied Saif in an autorickshaw to the Lilavati Hospital in Bandra, according to the charge sheet.
The charge sheet also contains the statement of the building’s watchman, Sureshkumar Yadav, who told the police that he only noticed the commotion around 2.30 am when the Khan family and their home helps came to the ground floor and Saif was bleeding.
Evidence collected
According to the charge sheet, the police collected 29 blood samples from the crime scene, along with 20 fingerprints of the accused from Satguru Sharan, including his left palm print from a wooden door on the building’s eighth floor. After entering the building compound, Shariful climbed to the first floor via a pipe and then used the staircase to reach the 11th floor. He allegedly tried to open doors on every floor to commit theft before eventually gaining access to the Khans’ duplex house on the 11th and 12th floors.
In total, the police seized 73 items during the investigation. Saif’s blood was found on the accused’s t-shirt, while his children’s nanny’s blood was found on the knives used in the assault—both blood samples matched in lab reports, according to the charge sheet. Additionally, a tissue used by the accused to wipe blood was recovered near the lift and also matched.
The police also recovered a Bangladeshi voter card and other documents written in Bengali. The investigation identified the accused as Mohammad Shariful Sajjad Ruhul Amin Fakir, 30, from Rajabaria village, Zilokathi district, Barishal state, Bangladesh.
