Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat and her French boyfriend were tear-gassed and struck by three masked intruders outside his flat in Paris in an apparent botched robbery, prosecutors said on Thursday.
The attack on the 40-year-old Indian actress and Cyrille Auxenfans, 45, came weeks after Kim Kardashian, the reality television star, was robbed at gunpoint in the French capital.
The assault this week took place as the couple arrived at Auxenfans’ residential building in the 16th arrondissement of Paris at 9.40pm.
The assailants fled empty-handed, according to Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, of the Paris prosecutor’s office, leaving a shocked Sherawat and her friend to call the emergency services.
A criminal inquiry has been opened. According to Le Parisien, a daily newspaper, the criminals wore scarves across their faces and “without saying a word, sprayed their victims with tear gas” before landing punches.
Both Sherawat and Auxenfans are thought to have inhaled tear gas fumes.
The prosecutor’s office said the actress and model got away with minor injuries but it was thought her boyfriend was harmed.
The couple refused to see a doctor to assess how badly they were hurt, said Thibault-Lecuivre.
After rising to fame in India in 2003, Sherawat went on to star in a string of films including Myth with Jackie Chan and popular in native country with nearly two million followers on Twitter.
She also appeared in a remake of Hawaii Five-0.
Auxenfans, who specialises in real estate, owns the flat in the building outside which the crime happened.
On October 3, a gang of five robbers tied up and robbed Kardashian at a Paris hotel and escaped with jewellery worth millions of pounds. The gang are still at large.
