Indian actor Saif Ali Khan recounts knife attack at his Mumbai home

Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan has revealed the details surrounding an intruder entering his house in January and repeatedly stabbing him with a knife.

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In an exclusive interview with the English-language newspaper Times Of India, Khan, 54, said he was woken around 2am, when his domestic helper rushed into his room and screamed that there was an intruder in his four-year-old son Jeh's bedroom, demanding money.

"Obviously, I kind of lost it and went in there and saw this guy holding what I thought were two sticks over Jeh's bed - it was a hexa blade. He had a knife in each hand and a mask on. It was a surreal scene." The Race (2008) star pulled the intruder down, wrestled him and thought the assailant was thumping him on the back repeatedly.

Those thumps turned out to be the man stabbing him with a knife.

Khan did not realise it was a knife at the time because of the adrenaline and shock during the incident. "And then, he was slashing at my neck, and I was blocking it with my hand. There were slashes to my palm, wrist and arm. There was all this violence slashing with both hands, most of which was kind of defended." Although the actor fought him off, he said, after a while, he could not handle the "two knives in action" because he was "just barefoot, bare-handed, in kurta pyjamas".

Khan's helper pulled the intruder off him and shoved him away and the two rolled away and closed the door.