Mumbai: Maharashtra's minister for ports and fisheries Nitesh Rane, who belongs to the BJP, caused a major embarrassment to his own party government on Thursday by publicly questioning if actor Saif Ali Khan was really stabbed.

Addressing a meeting in Pune, Rane, son of former CM Narayan Rane, asked if Saif was really stabbed or was he just acting? The Mumbai police, which is under chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, has been insisting that Saif was indeed stabbed and it had even arrested the man, a Bangladeshi, who allegedly made the knife attacks at the actor's Bandra residence on January 16.

The police have arrested one Shariful Islam and paraded him before Saif and his domestic servants who were present that night and all of them confirmed that he was indeed the attacker. The finger prints picked up from the actor's apartment also match with the ones taken from Islam. Saif underwent a six-hour-long surgery at the Lilavati Hospital, Bandra, where a 2.5 inch piece of the knife was extricated from near his spine.

"All these cannot be the figment of somebody's imagination. Islam is indeed the person who attacked Saif," a senior police official told FPJ on Thursday. For the question why Saif's wife Kareena Kapoor did not accompany him to the hospital, sources said she was not in a condition to so do.

These being the facts of the case, Rane Jr questioning the authenticity of the attack raises a question mark over the police's version of the attack. Fadnavis, who is in Davos, has not yet reacted to Nitesh Rane's assertions. But his partymen have asked him to rein in the minister lest the Maha Yuti government appear to be working at cross purposes.

"Look, Bangladeshis have entered Saif Ali Khan's house in Mumbai. Earlier these people used to stand at the intersections of the roads, now they have started entering the houses, and maybe they have come to take him away. It is good garbage should be taken away. When he came out of the hospital, I also saw and I doubted whether he was really stabbed or not. The way he came out walking it was as if he was acting and dancing, it all looks suspicious," Nitesh Rane said at a rally in Pune on Wednesday evening.

"But there is one thing, whenever any Khan, like Shah Rukh Khan or Saif Ali Khan, is hurt, people immediately start speaking and when a Hindu actor is tortured, then no one comes forward to say anything," he claimed. "What happened to that Sushant Singh?" the Minister asked.

He further said, "Jitendra Awhad and Supriya Sule (NCP-SP) did not come forward to say anything, they are only worried about Saif Ali Khan, Shah Rukh Khan's son and Nawab Malik. Have you ever seen them worry about any Hindu artiste? You (media) people should pay attention to all these things."

Rane's statement comes two days after Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Nirupam expressed surprise over the fitness of Saif Ali Khan after he walked out of the hospital without a walker or a wheelchair.

Referring to the actor's fitness despite the attack, Nirupam said, "The doctors said that the knife had penetrated 2.5 inches inside Saif Ali Khan's back. Probably it was trapped inside. The operation continued for six hours continuously. All this happened on 16th January. Today is 21st January. So fit as soon as you got out of the hospital? In just 5 days? Wonderful !"

(With inputs from IANS)