MUMBAI: The chargesheet in the Saif Ali Khan attack case cites an auto driver’s testimony that he dropped the accused illegal Bangladeshi national, Shariful Fakir (30), in the lane close to the building in which the actor resides on Jan 15, nearly 12 hours before the crime. The driver, Dhananjay Chaini, said he remembered the man because he paid more than double the fare for the ride from Bandra railway station.
According to the chargesheet, a CCTV camera captured Fakir getting down at a building just 78m away at 1pm on Jan 15. He walked on the road for a bit, entered the building and left after a while. He was spotted on cameras surveying the area between 3pm and 6.45pm.
Surveillance footage from the sixth floor of Khan’s building captured him going up the stairs at 1.37am on Jan 16 and getting down an hour later. Another CCTV camera showed him escaping through another building that shared a compound wall with Khan’s building at 3.37am. Fakir was later spotted on cameras at Patwardhan Garden bus stop on Bandra Link Road at 7.04 am, near a food establishment close to Bandra station at 8.25 am, at Dadar station at 8.35am, at a phone shop outside Dadar station from 9am-9.10 am, and loitering at Topli Wadi at Janata Colony in Worli at 10.05am.
The 1,613-page chargesheet also cites an uncle, Hafijul Shekawat Shaikh (52) in West Bengal, who said he threw Fakir out of his house just a day after his arrival from Bangladesh in July 2024 for stealing Rs 1,000 from his wallet. The police team investigating the case found that after being expelled, Fakir travelled to Kolkata, where he stole Rs 3,000 and a phone from a woman at a govt hospital. Allegedly using the stolen funds, he moved to Mumbai and secured a job at a Worli pub on July 10 but was dismissed from service in Oct for stealing Rs 1,000 from a patron.
Before breaking into Saif’s quadruplex, Fakir did a reconnaissance of the upscale Bandra neighbourhood for three days. When questioned by his employment agency supervisor about his absence from work during this period, Fakir cooked up a story that he had been detained by police following an altercation with an officer.
During interrogation, Fakir claimed that he was unaware of Saif’s celebrity status till he looked him up online.
