After a month of speculation by the public and studied silence on the part of Bollywood Badshah Shah Rukh Khan, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation has finally found documentary evidence that there is, indeed, a new Khan in the Super Khan residence.The trouble for the Badshah is that the new entrant is a boy and the media had broken the story last month that the Khans — Shah Rukh and Gauri — knew the gender of the baby much in advance, meaning they had participated in a sex determination test which is illegal in India. The authorities have now found evidence that the baby boy was born in a maternity hospital in the suburbs that is not at all where celeb go have their babies and come out smiling with the little bundle in their arms, in well-orchestrated publicity events. Instead, the Khan seems to have gone all out to keep Operation Khan Junior shrouded in secrecy, shifting the prematurely born baby from the place of birth to another hospital in South Mumbai that is known for the celebrity babies born within its fashionable walls. In doing this he seems to be playing to the song in his popular film Don that goes : Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai (It is not just difficult to nab Don, it is impossible to do so.” The surrogate mother, meanwhile, appears to be Gauri Khan’s sister-in-law who has since left the country, for her residence in London. Little is known about the whereabouts of the baby boy who will be number 3 in the pecking order in the Khan household. Khan’s first born is studying in London while his daughter lives with the couple in their heritage bungalow by the sea in the trendy Mumbai suburb, Bandra.

We don’t about the others but we are deeply intrigued by the entire operation. It is great for a couple to want to bring a baby into this world but knowing how squeaky clean his public image is, why did this man who sets a million hearts thudding in their rib cages with a mere look of those intense eyes, do something that is fraught with overtones of grey? On International Women’s Day he declared his female co-stars would get top billing over him, in his movies. He is known to be extremely respectful of women and chivalrous down to his last bone. Why then did he participate, if at all, in a gender determination test for his next baby? And, more than anything else, why did he choose to be a ‘me-too’ man to arch rival, Bollywood Aamir Khan, who had a surrogate baby last year in a similarly secrecy-filled operation? If you are a trend-setter, Mr. Khan, why did you copy the other Khan? You Khan’t do that to yourself. Meanwhile, armed with the birth certificate of the baby which clearly names him as the father, the local municipal authorities are now all set to go back to Mannat, the star’s bungalow, to begin investigations into the case all over again. We will keep you posted. And will hope that the star is not really guilty of the things he is accused of.