Saif sustains multiple wounds in knife attack at residence, stable

An as-yet unidentified man broke into the Bandra home of actors Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor-Khan in the early hours of Thursday, and inflicted multiple stab wounds on Saif Ali Khan, and also injured a member of their household staff.

- Manish Kumar Pathak and Yogesh Naik

MUMBAI:

The actor was rushed to Lilavati Hospital at 3.30 a.m. in an auto-rickshaw by a member of his staff and his son Ibrahim, hospital COO Dr. Niraj Uttamani said.

According to the police, the intruder had walked up the stairs until the fourth floor of the building from where he entered the duct area where all the pipes were. He clambered up the pipes to the 11th floor where the family's primary bedrooms are. He entered the house through the window in Khan's youngest son Jeh's bathroom, who was sleeping.

Khan, 54, sustained six stab wounds including a major injury to the thoracic spinal cord due to a part of the knife lodged in his spine. Dr. Nitin Dange, the neurosurgeon who operated on Saif, said: "Surgery was performed to remove the embedded knife part and repair leaking spinal fluid. Two other deep wounds on his left hand and neck were repaired by a team of plastic surgeons."

Dr. Uttamani said the actor, who underwent a five-hour surgery, is out of danger and recuperating. By Thursday evening, Mumbai police had released a CCTV grab of the alleged assailant who is at large. According to the FIR filed by the injured member of their staff, Elyimma Philips, known in the house as Lima, she woke up between 2.30 a.m. and 3 a.m. (after noticing a shadow in the bathroom of Jeh's bedroom where she was sleeping) and spotted an intruder lurking in an alcove outside one of the bathrooms.