False lead and new images later, accused stabbing Saif Ali Khan remains elusive | Bombay News

In the morning, Bandra police arrested a “suspect” and brought him in for questioning. But five hours later he was released after police found he had no connection to the case. Police sources said the man was arrested as he resembled the accused, who was captured on CCTV in Saif’s building, and had a history of petty crime.

Police also questioned a carpenter who recently worked in Saif’s building, as well as other workers. The carpenter’s family said he worked at the family home but had nothing to do with the attack.

With this line of inquiry having yielded no results so far, police appear to be back to square one. However, later in the evening, police sources said they discovered that the suspect had been captured on another CCTV, which indicated that he had changed his clothes after leaving the actor’s building.

The breakthrough came as police were scanning CCTV cameras in Bandra, and one camera conspicuously showed the suspect, dressed in a light blue half-sleeved shirt, near Lucky Junction. In the earlier CCTV footage from the emergency exit of the Satguru Sharan building, the accused was seen wearing a black half-sleeved T-shirt.

“The fact that the accused changed his clothes indicates that he may be a hardened criminal. The hunt has been intensified and CCTV cameras of nearby stations are being checked,” an officer said.

The piece of knife recovered from Saif Ali Khan’s spine after surgery.

Additionally, police sources said the suspect made a point of covering his face with a red scarf and cap to escape the building’s cameras.

An officer said he shared the suspect’s photo with almost everyone in the more than 40,000-strong force and retired officers, but no one has identified him so far.

Photographs were also shared with several taxi and automobile unions.

“With the publicity given to the photograph, if anyone in the city had seen it, they would have approached us. But that didn’t happen,” the officer said.

The officer said that in several cases of theft, the accused also used drugs. “We summoned several people facing drug charges, especially those who resembled the defendants, and questioned them. That didn’t do anything either,” the officer said.

Based on the preliminary crime scene investigation and examination of the building in which Khan resides with his family in a duplex (11th and 12th floors), police suspect that the intruder first jumped through the rear door of the building to enter the premises. Once he entered the building, he avoided CCTV cameras and took the emergency exit stairs until one point. He was filmed on CCTV walking up the floors barefoot at 1.38am with his face covered.

He is then suspected of having used a two-foot-wide handle to enter the bathroom of Khan’s youngest child from where he entered the house on the 11th floor. This is the first theory shared by the agents involved in the investigation.

After a fight with the intruder, Khan and the others managed to push him into the child’s room, after which they all escaped and closed the room from the outside. Police said that when the family rushed to the 12th floor of the house for safety, the accused most likely used the toilet window and exited through the same narrow shaft he had used to enter the house. He then reached the emergency exit stairs and was filmed by a CCTV camera located on the sixth floor of the building.

Police said security measures in the building are not strict. There were two guards at the main gate and one at the back gate. Officers said that for such a prestigious building in Bandra, the corporation does not have inadequate CCTV coverage. Local vendors outside the building told The Indian Express that security guards posted at the gate often allowed them to enter the building and visit the apartments without checking whether an order had been placed.

Police sources said they were tapping their network of informants and columnists to get leads on the suspect. They also analyze their database on history sheets that match the description of the suspect captured by surveillance video.

Bhajan Singh, the driver of the car that took Saif to the hospital, recalled that when he first saw the actor, he was drenched in blood and could barely walk. He said that when they arrived at Lilavati Hospital, there was a guard at the entrance. Only then did he realize who was in his car. “He (Saif) said, call him (the guard) quickly, ‘Main Saif Ali Khan hoon (my name is Saif Ali Khan)’. A stretcher was brought and he got on it,” Singh said.