A 31-year-old man was detained from a train in Durg, Chhattisgarh, in connection with the attack on actor Saif Ali Khan inside his Bandra home, though top investigators maintained the man remains a suspect and not an accused. A senior IPS officer from the Mumbai police overseeing the investigation told The Indian Express, “The suspect detained in Durg does not appear to be the accused, but we have sent a team (to Chhattisgarh) to verify. Mumbai police continue to put efforts into their hunt for the culprit.” RPF officials in Chhattisgarh said the man was on board the Jnaneswari Express, which runs from Mumbai’s Lokmanya Tilak terminus to Kolkata’s Shalimar railway station. At 12.24 pm, inspector Sanjeev Sinha of the RPF post at Durg railway station received information from an assistant police inspector from Juhu police station regarding the suspect. At the time, the train was between Gondia and Rajnandgaon stations. The RPF’s Durg unit communicated the information to the RPF post in Rajnandgaon district but the suspect could not be located. "Two teams were formed at Durg station and when the train arrived, the suspect was found sitting in the general compartment. His photo was sent to Mumbai police, who confirmed his identity as a suspect,” Sinha said. He was brought to the RPF post and a video call was made to Mumbai police officials. “He has been kept under proper guard at the RPF post in Durg," said Sinha. A Mumbai police team was expected to arrive in Chhattisgarh on Saturday night. On Friday, another man was detained by the police in Bandra and brought in for questioning. However, five hours later, he was let go as the police found that the man had no link with the case. Police sources said he had been picked up because he resembled the accused, who was caught on CCTV at Saif’s building and had a history of petty crime. In Saturday’s case too, the man picked up from Durg has a criminal record, officials said. "Plus he has similar features to the person seen in the CCTV footage from Satguru Sharvan, where Saif stays," an officer said. When a police team visited his Colaba home, they found he was not there. “We had his phone number, so we traced his call data records and found he was in Chhattisgarh,” the officer said. So far, it has been established that after being spotted at Lucky Junction area in Bandra, the accused likely boarded a local train, travelled to Dadar, purchased a mobile phone cover from a shop near platform 1 of Dadar (West) railway station, and headed towards Kabutarkhana. His movements were recorded on the CCTV camera at the mobile shop at 9.04 am, sources said. The police are likely to record the statement of the person who sold the phone cover to the accused. Another source said that four dozen teams were carrying out search operations in different parts of the city, including Dadar, Worli-Prabhadevi, Byculla, Churchgate and Cuffe Parade. On Thursday early morning, between 2 am and 2:30 am, the man snuck into Khan's 11th-floor apartment, injured the family’s nanny, and later attacked Khan with a knife six times before escaping. Khan, who bled profusely, was rushed to the Lilavati hospital by his family in an autorickshaw, where he underwent surgery. Senior doctors say he is stable and out of danger. – With inputs from Sagar Rajput & Mohamed Thaver
