Crucial lead that led to Saif Ali Khan’s attacker arrest: UPI payment for paratha, water bottle

“After searching there, the police team had almost left the spot when they decided to check once more. As they looked again, the light from one of the torches indicated someone sleeping on the ground. As an officer moved closer, the person got up and started running. He was soon caught and overpowered,” the sources said.

Mohammad Shariful Islam Shahzad, the prime accused in the Saif Ali Khan attack case being taken to Bandra court from Khar Police station on Sunday. (Express Photo: Ganesh Shirshekar)

“During initial questioning, the accused told us that after he saw his images being flashed on TV and YouTube, he got scared and fled to Thane as he had worked in a bar there and knew the area,” they said.

Earlier, the police started closing in on the suspect after tracking CCTV footage at the Bandra railway station and tracing him to a shop outside the Dadar station from where he bought a mobile cover. “But he made a cash payment here. After that, he moved to Kabutarkhana and then to Worli,” sources said.

As the police started scanning footage in the Worli area, they found the suspect lingering for a while at a stall near Century Mill. “In the footage, he was seen chatting twice with the person running the stall,” sources said. Crime Branch teams were soon deployed and they found that the man running the stall, Naveen Ekka, was staying near Koliwada. “On the suspicion that the accused was a friend of Ekka, seven police teams searched the Worli-Koliwada area on Saturday, showing pictures of the accused to vendors,” sources said.

According to investigators, the police traced Ekka’s address to a house of the Jaihind Mitra Mandal in Janata Colony where he was staying along with four or five other workers. But when they reached the spot, the house was locked, they said. The police then contacted the landlord Rajnarajayan Prajapati. “The police got Ekka’s mobile number through Prajapati’s son Vinod. They also showed Vinod a photo of the suspect. He confirmed that Ekka was a tenant but he could not identify the accused,” sources said.

Saif Ali Khan Attack case: The attacker, identified as Mohammad Islam, was arrested from Thane.

Soon, Ekka was tracked down, and he told the police that the suspect had made a UPI payment for paratha and the water bottle. “The police got the mobile number of the accused through us as he had paid the money through G Pay,” Vinod told The Indian Express.

The mobile number was a key turning point as it led the police to the labour camp at Kasarvadavali in Thane, and a contractor named Amit Pandey who had hired the accused a few months earlier. “Nearly 20 teams arrived at the location and began searching for the suspect. But he had fled the spot and turned off his mobile phone around 10 pm Saturday,” sources said.

That was when the hunt expanded to include the mangroves near the camp – and ended with that torch light shone by a member of the team led by DCP Navnath Dhawale.