It was in 1975 (or perhaps the first half of 1976) that I first set eyes on Saif Ali Khan. He was fast asleep on the upper berth of a coupe on a Mumbai-Ahmedabad train. The berth was booked in the name of his father, the Nawab of Pataudi, Mansoor Ali Khan, a former captain of India’s cricket team.
The Nawab and I had dinner on the lower berth, which was booked in my name. Ten years later, he came to my Chandigarh bungalow to interview me. He recalled our train journey and I inquired about his son.
A few years ago, I met Saif and his wife, Kareena, at the Mahalaxmi Race Course. It was the day of the Indian Derby. Saif and I were guests of our mutual friend, Farouq Rattonsey, whose horses had won the race in two successive years previously. I took advantage of the occasion to recount to him that train journey.
Earlier this month, I found his name and pictures splashed across newspapers and news channels for his brush with an intruder in his 11th-floor residence in Mumbai’s tony suburb of Bandra, where many Bollywood actors live. Saif was stabbed when he confronted the intruder. He had to go to a private, well-known hospital close to his home for medical treatment, including a surgery in close proximity to the spine. It was a delicate operation expertly performed by the hospital’s competent doctors. Saif recovered in five days and was discharged.
An unnecessary controversy was kicked up in the electronic and print media on unrelated issues like why his wife did not accompany him to the hospital and why he chose an autorickshaw over an Uber or an Ola. (Answer: It was easily available outside his residence).
The worst was yet to come. In the days following the assault, critics of the Maharashtra Government went to town proclaiming a total collapse of law and order. They denigrated my city of Mumbai as the most dangerous place to live in and its police force as the pits as far as security of life and property was concerned. Arnab Goswami, the doyen of sensation-seeking newshounds, found fault with every move the police made to nab the culprit. He was still smarting from the fact that the Mumbai Police had dared to arrest him and put him behind bars for a few days for trying to build up viewership through sensationalism.
Politicians went even further, making all sorts of inferences and insinuations, going to the extent of asserting that Saif was not stabbed or injured at all, but was merely playing to the ‘gallery’! BJP leader Nitesh Rane, recently inducted into the Mahayuti government, tried to introduce a communal angle into the episode. Nitesh is a known Muslim-baiter and poor Saif is consequently condemned in the minister’s eyes. I am sure that the minister is aware that Saif’s mother is Sharmila Tagore and his wife Kareena Kapoor. How much of Islam Saif himself has imbibed or follows is uncertain. As far as my knowledge goes, religion has never been a contentious issue in Bollywood.
The criticism of the police is even more disturbing. Doubts have been expressed about the identity of the man arrested, to the extent of asserting that he does not resemble the person shown entering and exiting through the staircase in the CCTV footage. The doubts have been created by elements who want to disparage the government at any cost, particularly on an occasion when a golden opportunity to berate it in the public eye presents itself, like it does when a prominent person is attacked.
Level-headed and fair-minded citizens will pat the back of the city police’s crime busters for the systematic and patient efforts they made to nab the culprit despite the tremendous pressure they faced from the onset of the investigation. It is not easy to get rid of public and political pressures to trace culprits quickly on such occasions. I have experienced such pressures myself all through my working years and hence can relate and sympathize with the officers and men entrusted with the job.
The officer who merits special mention is the DCP (Deputy Commissioner of Police) of Zone IX, Dikshit Gedam, in whose jurisdiction Bandra police station is located. He must have worked 18 hours a day in the week after the crime. He answered every question asked by the media without giving away clues that would hamper the arrest of the attacker. It was clear to an old policeman like me that he was on the right track and supervising the investigation carefully while simultaneously fending off the ‘attacks’ of the media and politicians with admirable equanimity. It is a difficult balancing act, but a dedicated police officer has to learn to navigate such obstacles if he has to succeed. Gedam appears to have passed that test with distinction. His immediate boss, Paramjit Dahiya, Additional Commissioner of Police (West Region), also had a major role to play in the investigation.
Reading between the lines, I suspect that the vital clue about the intruder’s identity came from the owner of the agency that had helped Shariful Islam, a Bangladeshi national, obtain employment in a bar in Mumbai’s suburbs. He appears to be a police informer. Shariful had been removed from his first job on the charge of theft in a restaurant. That had alerted the agency’s owner.
The fact that the intruder had crossed the India-Bangladesh border some eight months ago set off another raucous round of conjectures and accusations. Infiltration of Bangladeshis into India has taken root ever since the Pakistan Army unleashed its depredations there in 1971. Infiltration continued thereafter for economic reasons. It tapered off when Bangladesh’s economy improved and took off again when the agitation against the Sheikh Hasina government gathered steam.
To give other slants to immigration except the obvious economic one are games that politicians play. Infiltrators should be rounded up and sent back. The Mumbai Police have been doing this from the days I was its Police Commissioner and that is a good 40 years ago or more.
We have had enough of politics and amateur sleuthing in the Saif case. His Afghan ancestors had helped the East India Company win the war against the Marathas. In gratitude, the company bestowed on the Barech tribe of Pashtuns, led by Faiz Talab Khan, an ancestor of Saif, the princely state of Pataudi with 40 villages thrown in. Saif is the titular Nawab today, even though the intruder was unaware of his identity. He chose Saif’s flat because the actor had carelessly kept the bathroom window open.
(The author is former Police Commissioner Mumbai. The article was first published in the Tribune.)
