The Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel detained a 31-year-old suspect in the Saif Ali Khan attack case at the distant Durg railway station in Chhattisgarh on Saturday afternoon, offering a ray of hope to the Mumbai police, who had been searching for over 48 hours for the elusive assailant.

Acting on a lead provided by the Mumbai police, RPF officials detained the suspect, identified as Aakash Kailash Kanojia, from the Mumbai-Howrah Jnaneswari Express when the train arrived at Durg railway station at 2 pm.

“We identified the suspect based on a photograph, train number, and location details sent to us by the Mumbai police. He was sitting in a general compartment. A Mumbai Police team will soon arrive here to take him into custody,” a senior RPF official said at Durg railway station.

Enquiries by the RPF revealed that the suspect was travelling without a ticket. When questioned, he initially stated that he was going to Nagpur but later corrected himself, saying he was on his way to Bilaspur.

During the initial questioning, the suspect claimed that he stayed in Byculla, south Mumbai. The RPF officials arranged for him to speak to the Mumbai police via video call. A Mumbai police team is expected to take custody of the detained suspect late on Saturday and bring him to Mumbai for further investigation.

However, there was no formal statement from the Mumbai police regarding the suspect detained by the RPF at Durg railway station.

Earlier, fresh CCTV footage aired by some television channels showed the assailant at Dadar in north-central Mumbai at 9 am on Thursday, buying a pair of headphones before heading to the railway station.

So far, five CCTV clips have surfaced, including two purportedly from the staircase of the actor’s building “Satguru Sharan,” showing him going up and then coming down, one at Bandra station with a change of shirt, and two more from Dadar.

Saif had sustained six stab wounds, including one to his spine, while grappling with an intruder who had broken into his 12th-floor apartment in the posh “Satguru Sharan” building, located at the junction of 29th and 24th Roads in Bandra (W) in north-west Mumbai. The knife attack on the actor took place between 2 am and 2:30 am on Thursday, following a failed burglary attempt by the yet-to-be-identified intruder.

After being admitted to Lilavati Hospital, the actor underwent surgery to remove a knife lodged in his spine and to plug a spinal fluid leak. “The actor was brought to our hospital with six injuries, two of which were deep. We performed surgery near his spine and removed a 2.5-inch piece of knife from the spine,” said Dr. Niraj Uttamani, Chief Operating Officer of Lilavati Hospital, on Thursday.

Meanwhile, in a statement recorded before the Mumbai police on Thursday night, Saif Ali Khan’s wife, actress Kareena Kapoor-Khan, said that although jewelry was lying in the open, the attacker did not touch any of the ornaments. “The attacker was aggressive. I saw him attack Saif repeatedly... Our priority was to take Saif to the hospital,” Kareena told the police.

In a video that has surfaced, Kareena is heard saying that after her husband Saif left for the hospital, she was “terrified,” and her sister Karishma took her to her home.

Kareena’s statement that the intruder did not touch the ornaments has come as a surprise, given that the police had been maintaining that robbery was the motive behind the attack. In fact, Maharashtra’s Minister of State for Home, Yogesh Kadam, had gone on record telling media persons on Friday: “There is no involvement of any criminal gang in the attack on Saif Ali Khan. The preliminary probe points to robbery as the motive behind the incident.”