Attack on Saif Ali Khan: Police find fingerprints of assailant at 19 places in actor’s house, building
The cops perused hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from across the city even prior to the attack to map his movements
MUMBAI: A day after his arrest from the mangroves in Thane where he was found hiding, the police are trying to piece together a portrait of the man who launched a murderous attack on actor Saif Ali Khan early Wednesday morning.

Shariful Islam Shehzad Mohammed Rohilla Amin Fakir, 30, is believed to be a Bangladeshi national who came to Mumbai in August last year. He did odd jobs at multiple places in the hospitality sector. A brief stint at a pub in Lower Parel, another stint at a resto-pub in Thane, one of the thousands who form the city’s floating labour population. In the 15 days before he scaled the duct pipes of Satguru Sharan, a 12-storey luxury apartment building in the heart of Bandra, Shariful had had no work.
On Monday, police disclosed that they had found 19 sets of fingerprints of the intruder from the actor’s duplex apartment at Satguru Sharan, which have been sent to a forensic lab for a match. They also disclosed details of the 72-hour long cat-and-mouse game that eventually led them to the mangroves from where Shariful was arrested. The cops perused hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from across the city even prior to the attack to map his movements. The first real breakthrough came when Shariful was spotted on a CCTV camera in DN Nagar, Andheri West, on January 9, riding pillion on a motorcycle. The registration number of the bike led the police to a Thane-based labour contractor, Amit Pandey. The police tracked down Pandey who told them that not only did he know Shariful but also the fact that he was a Bangladeshi national.
After Pandey gave the cops Shariful’s number, they learnt that he had obtained a SIM card in Kolkata by providing fake ID under the name of Bijoy Das. On Saturday, the police tracked his mobile location to Thane, leading to his eventual arrest from the mangroves near Hiranandani Estate.
The police disclosed that Shariful entered the bedroom of Khan’s younger son Jehangir after climbing several floors via the ducts around 1.45 am on Wednesday. Kareena Kapoor Khan had just got back home ten minutes ago and the couple was still awake when the children’s nurse Eliyamma Philips spotted Shariful in the room and raised an alarm. The CCTV cameras of the building next captured him at 2.37am as he descended the staircase. It was this picture that provided the first clue to the police about the possible identity of the intruder.
Unexpectedly, Shariful did not leave the vicinity of the building immediately, officials said. Instead he was found wandering in the area for the next six hours. He went to a garden near National College, Bandra, which is little over 300 metres from Satguru Sharan, and slept there for a couple of hours. He woke up around 6.30am, changed his clothes and left the garden, and moved towards Bandra station. The CCTV camera near Lucky Restaurant on SV Road captured him at 7 am, officials added.
He then walked to Bandra railway station and took a train towards Churchgate at 8.26am, before getting down at Dadar around 8.45 am. At 9.04am, he was caught on a CCTV camera outside a mobile accessories shop in Dadar West, where he bought earphones for ₹50, officials said. Shariful next went to Worli, where he had a paratha and bought a water bottle from a stall near Century Bazaar by paying through UPI. Later in the afternoon, he went to Thane to meet his friend Amit Pandey, the labour contractor.
After obtaining CCTV footage of the accused, the police ran it through facial recognition software and cross-checked it with footage of hundreds of CCTV cameras installed in the western suburbs. The police learnt that he had travelled on trains between Dadar and Andheri on four days earlier this month.
During the investigation, the police found that Shariful is a native of the Jhalokathi district in Bangladesh. He had allegedly entered India illegally by crossing the border in August and assumed a new identity, Bijoy Das. He then stayed in Kolkata for a while where he obtained Indian identity documents, opened a bank account and also bought a SIM card using yet another name. He then came to Mumbai and stayed at Worli Koliwada.
The accused initially worked as a housekeeping staff member at a pub in Lower Parel. He was then removed from the job, purportedly on account of allegations of theft, after which he worked at a restaurant in Thane. For the past 15 days, he was unemployed, which is why he was in touch with Pandey, said a police officer.
A Mumbai court on Sunday remanded Fakir to police custody till January 24, observing that the police’s contention of an international conspiracy linked to the case cannot be ruled out.
The three questions yet to be answered:
1) The police investigation is yet to establish how the assailant gained entry into Satguru Sharan, where actors Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor-Khan live with their family in a duplex apartment that sprawls across the 11th and 12th floors and part of the terrace. Did the intruder target the actors’ home specifically, and if so why?
2) Why did the accused, after grievously injuring Saif Ali Khan, continue to roam around the vicinity of the building for the next six hours, as first reported by HT.
3) Did the intruder have accomplices who guided him to Khan’s home? It beggars belief that he randomly selected Satguru Sharan and of all the apartments in the building, he chose the Khans’ penthouse, which would be the hardest to reach.
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