Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan said it was a miracle he survived, and his body was functioning properly despite the 30 “most awful scars” down his neck. Photo: Reuters
Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan has revealed the details surrounding an intruder entering his house in January and repeatedly stabbing him with a knife.
In an exclusive interview with the English-language newspaper Times Of India, Khan, 54, said he was woken around 2am, when his domestic helper rushed into his room and screamed that there was an intruder in his four-year-old son Jeh’s bedroom, demanding money.
“Obviously, I kind of lost it and went in there and saw this guy holding what I thought were two sticks over Jeh’s bed – it was a hexa blade. He had a knife in each hand and a mask on. It was a surreal scene.”
The Race (2008) star pulled the intruder down, wrestled him and thought the assailant was thumping him on the back repeatedly. Those thumps turned out to be the man stabbing him with a knife.
Khan did not realise it was a knife at the time because of the adrenaline and shock during the incident.
“And then, he was slashing at my neck, and I was blocking it with my hand. There were slashes to my palm, wrist and arm. There was all this violence – slashing with both hands, most of which was kind of defended.”
Although the actor fought him off, he said after a while, he could not handle the “two knives in action” because he was “just barefoot, bare-handed, in kurta pyjamas”.
Khan’s helper pulled the intruder off him and shoved him away and the two rolled away and closed the door.
He said: “At this point, I was covered in blood and lost some feeling in my right leg. This was because I had been nicked in the spine, but I didn’t realise that at the time. I thought I had been stabbed in the leg.”
Meanwhile, his helper had shut the door to the room the intruder was in, and the family believed he was locked inside. However, he escaped the same route he entered from, which was up a drainpipe and into Khan’s children’s bathroom.
Khan wanted to go after the intruder, however, his wife, actress Kareena Kapoor, 44, urged him to leave the house because she believed the intruder was still within the premises of the home.
“We have to get you to a hospital, and I have to get Jeh out of here because I feel the intruder is still around and there could be more of them,” she had said.
Kapoor frantically called people, but nobody was awake.
“And we looked at each other, and I said, ‘I’m fine. I’m not going to die.’ And Taimur also asked me, ‘Are you going to die?’ I said, ‘No’,” Khan recalled.
His older son Taimur, eight, was apparently composed and fine after the incident and went with his father to the hospital.
“He said, ‘I’m coming with you’, and I thought if something happens... I was getting a lot of comfort just from looking at him at that time. And I did not want to go alone.”
Kareena Kapoor posted this photo on Jan 6 welcoming 2025. Photo: Kareena Kapoor
Khan, Taimur and a member of their staff then went to Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital in a rickshaw.
The actor walked into the hospital covered in blood and with Taimur by his side. “It took them a minute to understand that there was a celebrity involved and this was a slightly bizarre, absurd scenario. Just took a minute to sink in, you know, that a movie star had been stabbed.
“I had a lot of clarity and adrenaline,” Khan added. After the staff realised who he was, they were efficient and made some decisions, including calling spinal neurosurgeon Nitin Dange.
“They said a good three to four inches of the knife had gone in behind the shoulder blade and had worked its way right to the bloody spinal cord. It was a massive stab and it was broken off, and it had nicked the cover of the spinal cord. There was spinal fluid leaking out, which was why the feeling in the leg was going. That was how close it came – just one more millimetre and we’d be talking paralysis.”
He said his doctors did a phenomenal job with the surgery – which took six hours – with the spinal matter alone taking 2½ hours. Khan disclosed that he was under anaesthesia for five hours, and the procedure was the longest surgery he had been in.
Responding to questions about how he could walk so well after being so close to paralysis, he said: “Close is close. You’re either paralysed or you’re not.”
He said it was a miracle he survived, and his body was functioning properly despite the 30 “most awful scars” down his neck.
“I don’t understand how he missed my carotid artery and jugular vein. It’s not possible to cut somebody’s neck the way my neck is cut, and not kill them.”
He also clarified that he was not chauffeured to the hospital because the drivers on his staff did not stay the entire night unless asked. “Everyone has a home to go to,” he said.
According to Khan, he would have driven to the hospital, but could not find the keys. He said it was lucky he did not find the keys because he should not have moved his back too much.
Khan maintained that his family did not call the driver because he would have taken time to get there, and the actor was aware he had to go to the hospital soon.
He also commented on people’s negative reactions to the attack, including those who claimed he was acting.
“I think it is expected that there will be all kinds of reactions to something like this. There will be people ridiculing it. There will be people not believing it, people making fun of it. And I think that’s fine because it is what gives colour to the world. If everyone had a sympathetic reaction to something, it would be flat and dull.”
He also appreciated all those who have shown him kindness in this time. “From the ward boys to the doctors to the rickshaw driver, they were all just angels, heaven-sent.”
“There is a lot of kindness in the world and a fair amount of stupidity also. But that’s what makes it interesting.” – Dawn/Asia News Network
