Saif Ali Khan was stabbed six times in the back by an intruder during a failed robbery attempt at his residence last month. The actor underwent two major surgeries, including the removal of a three-inch knife blade lodged dangerously close to his spine.
While well-wishers poured in with their support, some speculated about the authenticity of the incident. Recently, Saif revealed harrowing details of how he fought the armed attacker alone until his house help intervened. He admitted that had the intruder inflicted a more severe injury to his neck or spine, he could have been left “paralysed”.
In a conversation with The Times of India, the actor shared why his elder son Taimur took him to the hospital and not Kareena. He said, “He (Taimur) was absolutely composed. He was fine. He said, ‘I’m coming with you.’ I was getting a lot of comfort just from looking at him at that time. And I didn’t want to go alone. My wife sent him knowing what he would do for me. Maybe it wasn’t… at the moment, it was the right thing to do. I felt good about it. And I also thought, if God forbid, something happens, I’d like for him to be there. And he wanted to be there also.” While Saif and Taimur made their way to the hospital, Kareena took Jeh to her sister Karisma Kapoor’s home.
Saif recounted that he and Kareena Kapoor were asleep when, around 2 a.m., one of their house helps rushed into their room, alarmed by an intruder demanding money in their younger son Jeh’s room. As he rushed to confront the situation, Saif found a masked man standing over Jeh’s bed, wielding what initially appeared to be two sticks but were actually “sharp hexa blades”.
“Something took over me,” Saif recalled, describing how he instinctively grabbed the intruder and pulled him down. However, being armed, the attacker retaliated, stabbing Saif in the back and neck multiple times. “I couldn’t handle it after a while as there were two knives in action. I was praying that someone could get this guy off me at this point,” he shared. That’s when his house help, Geeta, stepped in and managed to pull the attacker away.
Saif further shared that he locked the intruder inside Jeh’s room. However, the assailant managed to escape the same way he had entered – through the drainpipe in the kids’ bathroom.
It was only upon reaching the hospital that Saif grasped the gravity of his injuries. Doctors informed him that a four-inch blade had penetrated his shoulder blade, reaching close to his spinal cord. He described it as a “massive stab,” revealing that the knife had even nicked the protective covering of his spinal cord which caused spinal fluid leakage and temporary numbness in his leg. “That’s how close it came – just one more millimetre, and we’d be talking paralysis,” he said.
Saif underwent an extensive six-hour surgery.
