(Image source from: PTI)
The man accused of stabbing Saif Ali Khan, Shariful Islam Shehzad, was tracked down and arrested by the Mumbai Police after he made a digital payment for a paratha breakfast. The police were able to locate him based on this digital transaction made through Google Pay on his mobile phone. Shehzad had previously worked at the restaurant where he received praise for his hard work. The police also plan to speak with the person, named Pandey, who hired Shehzad. After the attack in Bandra, Shehzad fled to various areas like Dadar, Thane, Worli, and Andheri, but the digital payment trail ultimately led the police to his whereabouts.
The suspect was apprehended by the police after he had been on the run since the attack on the Bollywood star at his residence in Mumbai's upscale Bandra West area early on Thursday. The police believe he managed to bypass the high-security building's defenses by scaling the wall of an adjacent building and sneaking in through a rear staircase. He reportedly told the authorities that he used the air conditioning ducts to avoid detection, climbing up to the 12th floor and entering the actor's apartment through a bathroom window. The actor's staff spotted him, which triggered the sequence of events leading to the attack.
The CCTV footage clearly showed Shehzad entering and leaving the stairwell, which helped the police identify and track his movements. The investigation involved forming 30 police teams, each following different leads and reviewing hours of security footage, not just from Saif Ali Khan's home. A critical moment was when they spotted Shehzad on CCTV footage in Andheri, about 12 km from Bandra West, where he was seen on a two-wheeler, providing another way to track him. Shehzad was at a bus stop in the Bandra area until 7am on the day of the attack, after which he took a train to Worli. The police also traced his phone's signal for a while, but lost it after he turned it off, as he had panicked upon seeing his photo on TV news after the CCTV footage from Saif Ali Khan's house. The last known location of his phone was in Thane.
The actor's youngest son, Jehangir, was involved in the incident. Shehzad claimed he did not know he was in Saif Ali Khan's home. During the altercation, Khan was stabbed six times, including a serious wound near his spine. After the stabbing, the suspect fled and changed his blood-stained clothes; the police are still looking for this piece of evidence to match with Khan's blood and prove that Shehzad was the one who stabbed the actor. Khan was quickly taken to Lilavati Hospital in an auto-rickshaw, as his private vehicles were not immediately available, and underwent extensive surgery for several hours. Doctors successfully removed a 2.5-inch piece of the knife from his back and stated that he is recovering well. Shehzad has been remanded to police custody for five days, and the authorities are also investigating whether he had any accomplices within the actor's home.
