Barefoot, in a kurta pyjama

How Saif Ali Khan fought off his attacker

As fans wait for updates about the investigation into Saif Ali Khan's home invasion – which resulted in him being stabbed and subsequently hospitalised – the Bollywood star has gone one step further and delivered something even better: he has given an exclusive interview with the Times of India to give his personal account of how it played out.

Being attacked

In Saif's own words, the evening started off in its usual mundane fashion, with the actor staying home as his wife, Kareena Kapoor Khan, went out. "Kareena had been out to dinner, and I had some work in the morning, so I stayed in," he began. "She came in, we had a chat and went to sleep."

So far, so ordinary. But as those in the know are aware, matters skidded into unchartered territory when Hari, a member of staff, barged into the couple's room at 2AM and began screaming about an intruder in his son Jeh's room, demanding money. In the heat of the moment, Saif catapulted into action, running headfirst into a situation he didn't quite understand – to his cost.

"Obviously, I kind of lost it, and went in there to see and I saw this guy holding [what I thought were] two sticks over Jeh's bed - it was actually a hexa blade. He had a knife in each hand and a mask on. It was a surreal scene."

Without realising the severity of the situation, the Bhoot Police actor acted on pure instinct and charged at the intruder. "Something just kind of took over and I just grabbed him," he recalled. "I ran and pulled him down, and then we were wrestling. He was thumping me as hard as he could in my back, and it was just thuds."

What Saif mistook for thuds, however, was actually the assailant's knife plunging into his back. "It didn't really hurt because there's too much adrenaline and shock at that moment," noted the star. "And then he was slashing at my neck, and I was blocking it with my hand. There were slashes to my palm and wrist and arm. There was all this violence, slashing with both hands."

Despite his efforts at combat, Saif admitted he was ill-equipped to fight a man wielding two weapons at once. "I was just barefoot, bare-handed in a kurta pyjama," he reminded readers.

The aftermath

With a screaming Kareena having removed the sleeping Jeh from the room, Saif's prayers that he could be rescued were answered when his house help pulled him away, shoved off the intruder and shut the door.

"At this point, I was covered in blood and lost some feeling in my right leg," said the actor. "I had been nicked in the spine, but I didn't realise it at the time – I thought I'd been stabbed in the leg."

Without anyone in the home realising it at the time, the assailant had already fled the way he had come – "up a drainpipe into the kids' bathroom", as Saif elaborated.

"We all headed downstairs. It was a filmi scene where I was covered in blood, and we took two decorative swords off the wall."

Looking back, Saif chuckled at the so-called 'filminess' of how it must have appeared to the casual onlooker – or in this case, his eight-year-old son Taimur, who took in the scene of the blood and the swords. It was at that point that Kareena nixed any ideas of the family capturing the escaped attacker single-handedly, despite Saif's heat-of-the-moment declaration to "let's get him". Convinced that the intruder was still nearby, Kareena urged Saif to get to the hospital as she took Jeh to her sister Karisma Kapoor's house. Taimur, however, appeared "composed" and insisted on accompanying his father.

As Saif headed to Mumbai's Lilavati hospital in a rickshaw with Taimur and their house help, he described the spectrum of father-son emotions coursing through him. "I was getting a lot of comfort from looking at him at the time," he said. "And I didn't want to go alone. My wife sent him knowing what he would do for me. It was the right thing to do. I thought, if God forbid something happens, I'd like for him to be there."

Hospital treatment

Picture a blood-soaked star of the screen walking into a hospital – because that is exactly how Saif's hospital entry played out. "It took them a minute to understand that there's a celebrity involved in this slightly bizarre, absurd scenario. Just took a minute to sink in, you know, that a movie star has been stabbed."

Still running on adrenaline despite his injuries, Saif continued, "They brought a wheelchair and I said, no, I don't think a wheelchair is a good idea, get me a stretcher. And I pointed at my face and said, 'I'm Saif Ali Khan.'" Laughing at the memory, Saif added, "They did a double take – and then all hell broke loose."

The actor recounted that the hospital staff could not believe he was still able to walk despite the wounds in his back, and immediately began his treatment, comprising an MRI and a consultation with a spinal neurosurgeon.

"They said a good three-to-four inches of the knife has gone in behind the shoulder blade and has worked its way right to the bloody spinal cord," explained Saif. "And there's spinal fluid leaking out, which was why the feeling in the leg was going."

In awe of his brush with death, the actor added, "Just one millimetre and we'd be talking paralysis. It's not like, you know, a back spasm or something that we're underplaying."

Praising the "phenomenal" doctors, Saif said it was the longest he had ever been in surgery. "It took six hours – the spinal thing alone took 2.5 hours. I was under anaesthesia for like five hours or something."

Lessons learned

Despite the scope of his injuries, Saif said his healing has been "incredible" and largely pain-free, barring some muscular pain. Having survived the harrowing incident, the actor added that he still feels safe in Mumbai and refuses to be accompanied by security guards ("it would be a nightmare") on the basis that his home invasion was completely arbitrary.

"You've got to lock the doors properly and you've got to lock the windows," he pointed out. "You can't tempt fate [...] it's not going to change my life. This was somebody trying to steal something out of desperation."

Saif reflected that Taimur had said the intruder should be forgiven because he was "hungry". "I also believe I would have forgiven him. I feel bad for him, till where that knife comes in and my spine comes in and the fact that he tried to kill me," he mused. "That's where I stopped feeling bad for him. I understand why he did it, but he crossed the line when he went mad on me."