Attack on Saif: Forensic report confirms identity of arrested accused

CCTV footage confirms Shariful Fakir, arrested for attacking Saif Ali Khan, matches images from the scene, aiding police in tracking him post-incident.

MUMBAI: Was the CCTV grab of the man fleeing Saif Ali Khan’s building in the early hours of January 16 – the first image released by the police after the attack on the actor – a match for Shariful Islam Shehzad Fakir, the suspect arrested for breaking into Khan’s Bandra home?

Attack on Saif: Forensic report confirms identity of arrested accused

A facial recognition test has returned a positive result, showing that the image of the suspect fleeing via the stairwell of Khan’s building matched images of the suspect arrested for the attack, as well as 25 CCTV grabs of the suspect captured by cameras along the route he took after he broke in to the actor’s home. The results of the facial recognition test are contained in a forensic report received on Friday by the Bandra police investigating the case.

Police said the forensic report confirmed that Shariful Fakir, a 30-year-old Bangladeshi, was the individual captured by CCTV cameras installed in and around Satguru Sharan building, where the actor resided, and at several other places in the vicinity and elsewhere in the city.

The 54-year-old actor sustained multiple stab wounds when he confronted his assailant and tried to nab him, after he broke into his apartment to commit a robbery. The suspect also assaulted two members of the house staff but managed to flee.

Police sifted through several hours of CCTV footage to identify the suspect and were astonished to find that he had left a trail that he had made no attempt to conceal.

After fleeing Khan’s 11th floor apartment at around 2.35am, the suspect was captured by a private CCTV camera installed by a resident on the sixth floor of Satguru Sharan building at 2.37am, as he descended the staircase. He was also captured by other CCTV cameras installed in the building, while entering and exiting, police said.

After this, police identified the suspect at various places near Khan’s apartment, even at a garden where he rested for a few hours and changed his clothes before he proceeded to Bandra railway station. Next, he took a Churchgate-bound train to Dadar. Here, he was caught on CCTV at a mobile accessories shop, after which he was seen purchasing a bottle of water from a stall in Worli. Later that day, he went to Thane to meet Amit Pandey, a labour contractor.

The Bandra police followed his trail through footage captured by around 300 CCTV cameras. They sent 25 clear grabs of the suspect’s face to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Kalina, Santacruz, to see if there was a facial recognition match with photographs taken of Shariful Fakir after his arrest.

“The report is positive for all the 25 CCTV grabs that we had sent to the forensic science laboratory, including images from cameras installed at entry and exit and points and in the staircase of Satguru Sharan building,” said a police officer.

The officer said that based on the images in the CCTV grabs, the angle of the suspect’s face in these images and other details, police took photographs of Shariful after his arrest. They submitted all the CCTV images and photographs taken by them to the forensic laboratory for facial-image comparison.

“The forensic experts matched the alignment of his face from various angles and the dimensions of facial features such as the space between his eyebrows and eyes, the philtrum (space between the upper lip and nose), distance between ear and eye etc, and concluded that the man captured by the CCTV cameras was the same individual as the one whose photographs had been sent to check for a match,” said the officer.

He proceeded to address the question that had arisen after Shariful was arrested, that images of him did not resemble the individual in the CCTV grab of the suspected assailant descending the stairwell in Khan’s building.

“CCTV recordings may get pixelated and unclear if the resolution of the camera is not high-definition. The night vision in these cameras too may distort the images and they could get pixilated. Besides, a person moving quickly in front of the camera may also be captured with distortion,” said the senior police officer.