The Bollywood actor Mallika Sherawat was punched in the face and sprayed with teargas by masked attackers in an upmarket area of Paris, police have said.

The 40-year-old star and her partner were attacked by three masked men who tried to steal her handbag.

The couple told police the men had ambushed them in the lobby of the apartment building where they were staying in the chic 16th arrondissement of the French capital on 11 November.

The incident comes weeks after the US reality TV star Kim Kardashian was attacked in Paris in a robbery in which a masked gang stole jewellery worth more than $10m (£8m).

However, investigators said they were mystified that although the attackers had tried to take Sherawat’s handbag, they had fled empty-handed.

“We cannot understand why the attackers fled without taking anything,” a source in the investigation told AFP.

Sherawat, whose real name is Reema Lamba, came to prominence in 2004 thanks to a film that helped bust taboos around sex in the conservative Indian film industry. She is known for her role in the film Murder and also starred in Jackie Chan’s The Myth in 2005.

She is also a women’s rights activist and caused controversy with comments about how Indian society is “regressive and depressive” because of how it treats women.