A Mumbai police team on Monday tracked down a woman in Nadia district whom they identified as the owner of a SIM card found in the possession of the alleged attacker of Saif Ali Khan.

The SIM card found with Mohammad Shariful Islam Shahzad — the Bangladeshi suspected to have stabbed the actor at his Bandra home on January 16 — originally belonged to Khukumoni Sheikh, 33, sources said.

The Mumbai team questioned Khukumoni, a widowed mother of three who works as an ayah, on her possible links with the suspect.

After she was questioned three times over a few hours, she was scratched off the list of suspects for the time being, sources in the Mumbai police said.

Khukumoni has been asked not to leave the jurisdiction of Krishnanagar police without informing the Mumbai police, sources in her family said.

“The woman was questioned by the police from Mumbai. After that she was allowed to go,” said the superintendent of police, Krishnanagar police district, Amarnath K.

Sources said the SIM card found with Shahzad was linked to Khukumoni's Aadhaar. This brought the eight-member police team from Mumbai to Bengal on Sunday.

Khukumoni said she had lost her phone along with the SIM card a year ago at a government hospital.

“My brother-in-law was ill. We took him to the NRS Medical College and Hospital in Calcutta. I had to stay in the hospital for a few days,” Khukumoni told The Telegraph.

“I had taken an old phone and bought a SIM card from a shop near the hospital.”

She said she had called her number from another phone for two consecutive days till a male voice responded.

“I told the person to keep the phone but return the SIM card. He said he was in Mumbai. I told him to send the SIM card through someone. He said he was from Bangladesh,” Khukumoni said.“He then disconnected the call. It has been a year and the phone has been switched off since. I never reported my phone loss.”

The Mumbai team first visited Boro Angulia village, the address mentioned on the Aadhaar card, but ran into a dead end. From there they traced Khukumoni’s parental home to Alpha village and then arrived at her present address at Jhitkapota village in Krishnanagar where she lives with her aunt and youngest daughter. “The police asked me about the SIM card and if I knew the man. I told them how I had lost the phone,” she said.

Sources said the investigators did not find any discrepancies in her statement and so she was allowed to go.