Mumbai police on Sunday claimed to have arrested the man who stabbed Saif Ali Khan and said he was “prima facie” a Bangladeshi living illegally in India and under an assumed Hindu name.

While deputy commissioner of police Dixit Gedam said that Mohammad Shariful Islam Shahzad was trying to rob Saif’s home without realising it belonged to an actor, sources said the police had told a court they “suspect an international conspiracy”. The court sent the suspect to five days’ police remand.

The police said Shahzad, 30, had adopted the name Vijay Das after entering India six months ago, but the suspect’s lawyer Sandeep Sekhane said his client had been living in Mumbai for more than seven years with his family.

“The police have provided no evidence that he is a Bangladeshi,” Sekhane told reporters. He did not comment on Shahzad’s alleged assumption of a false name.

Officers said Shahzad was arrested in the early hours of Sunday from a mangrove forest in the Ghodbunder area of Thane, about 25km from Mumbai, but did not explain how they had tracked him down.

They added that CCTV footage from January 9 — a week before the attack — had helped the police identify Shahzad. The footage purportedly showed the suspect roaming in the Dadar railway station area and parts of Prabhadevi and Worli Koliwada near Saif’s home.

“We arrested the accused from Thane. He has been identified as Mohammad Shariful Islam Shahzad and prima facie he is a Bangladeshi,” Gedam told reporters.

Shahzad faces charges of attempted robbery, causing grievous hurt with intention of robbery, and trespass.

“We have also applied sections of the Passport Act against him after he failed to produce any proof that he was Indian, and we found some proof that he is Bangladeshi,” Gedam said, without elaborating.

He said the suspect hadno criminal record. “After entering India illegally, he changed his name. He was using Vijay Das as his current name,” he said.

“He came to Mumbai 5-6 months ago and stayed in Mumbai for a few days and then in the vicinity of Mumbai. The accused used to work in a housekeeping agency.”

An officer who asked not to be named said that apart from the robbery angle, the police were also probing whether it was a premeditated attack prompted by some yet-to-be-known motive, and whether the suspect had anyaccomplices.

“Further interrogation will help uncover details,”he said.

After the attack, the suspect changed his location several times, dodged CCTV cameras and hid in the Dadar and Worli areas, police sources said.

Posters with images, extracted from CCTV footage, showing a man descending the stairs at Saif’s apartment building had been circulated across Mumbai and its neighbourhood.

“The accused did not know that he was entering the home of a Bollywood actor. Someone had told him that only rich people lived in that locality. After entering the premises, he found an AC duct where he hid before breaking into the building,” a source said.

The police have so far found nothing against the two suspects detained on Saturday in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, sources said.

It took 35 teams, three days and the questioning of multiple suspects for the police to arrest the accused.

An intruder had sneaked into Saif’s 12th-floor flat between 2am and 2.30amon January 16, according to the police complaint byEliyamma Philip, nanny to the actor’s youngest son, four-year-old Jeh.

The man allegedly tried to hold Jeh and Philip hostage, demanded ₹1 crore and assaulted the nanny. Confronted by Saif, he allegedly stabbed the actor multiple times before fleeing.

The actor received at least six stab wounds. He is out of danger and will be discharged over the next few days, doctors have said.