Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan is being shifted out of the ICU and his potentially life-threatening injury, where the attacker’s knife was lodged in his spine, has been repaired, doctors at Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai said on Friday morning.

“He is doing excellent. We made him walk. There is not much pain. He has been moved to a special room from ICU,” Lilavati Hospital’s chief neurosurgeon, Dr Nitin Dange, told newspersons in a health update on the injured actor.

“The injury to the spine could have been worse had the knife struck 2mm deeper,” said Dange. “We are observing his progress.”

He said the actor would be good for discharge from hospital in a matter of days. The doctors have advised him to take rest for at least a week as the possibility of the wound near the spinal cord getting infected cannot be ruled out.

“The chances of infection cannot be ruled out so he has been advised rest. The fluid that was oozing out from the open wound has been stopped,” said Dange.

The 54-year-old actor was repeatedly stabbed by an intruder in his plush apartment in the western Mumbai suburb of Bandra area early on Thursday.

The Mumbai police have detained one person in connection with the attack and he is being quizzed at Bandra police station.

According to the doctors, despite the grievous injuries Saif had walked into the hospital around 3.30am and refused to take a stretcher.

Of the six injuries that were inflicted on the actor, four were of concern to the surgeons who operated on him on Thursday morning – two in the hand, one on the neck and the most worrisome around the spinal cord.

Access to the special room where the actor has been moved is restricted. There is no clarity yet on when he would be able to give his statement before the Mumbai police investigating the case.