Rio de Janeiro, Dec 26: Braziian l football star Adriano was interrogated by police for accidentally shooting a woman in his car with his bodyguard's gun.
The 20-year-old woman Adriene Cyrilo Pinto was hit in her left hand and needed surgery following the incident outside a Rio de Janerio nightclub.
The former Inter Milan forward, 29, had reportedly left a party at Barra Music club with four young women at 6am on Christmas Eve when the incident happened, reports Daily Mail.
Pinto told police the footballer was fooling around with his bodyguard's .44 calibre pistol in the back seat of the BMW when it accidentally went off and hit her.
Police sergeant Amilton Dias told Brazil's Record TV that the footballer had taken out the gun's magazine and was showing off to the women, who he was taking back to his home.
However, he did not realise there was still a bullet lodged inside the barrel.
Police Sergrant Dias said: 'The player, Adriano, with the gun in his hand, stupidly waved the firearm in the direction of the passengers. That's when the shot was discharged accidentally.'
He added that the player, who this year won the Brazilian Championship with Sao Paulo giants Corinthians, called an ambulance for Ms Pinto but did not hand himself into police.
Two of the other women who were in the car, both aged 28, later contested Ms Pinto's version of events, claiming she had shot herself in the hand in a deliberate attempt to attract publicity.
Adriano - full name Adriano Leite Ribeiro - spent Christmas Eve being interrogated by police.
He insists that he was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car and never touched the gun, which the bodyguard had placed underneath the driver's seat.
Police said that tests had been carried out on the hands of both Adriano and Ms Pinto to determine who had been holding the gun, and results would be ready in eight days.
A spokesman for the Barra D'Or Hospital said she had suffered a fracture to her index finger but no arteries or tendons had been damaged.
She will undergo reconstructive surgery on her hand tomorrow.
Adriano, who won Serie A four times while at Inter Milan, has seen his career go off the rails in recent years because of problems with his weight, alcohol and depression.
The firearms incident was not his first brush with Brazilian authorities.
In 2010, he was accused of having dealings with drug traffickers in Rio but police did not press charges because of a lack of evidence.
The investigation began after photos appeared on the internet of the striker holding a rifle, which Adriano later claimed was a toy.
In 2009 he was also accused of buying a motorcycle in the name of his mother and then delivering it to one of the heads of a trafficking gang in a Rio favela.
And last year police decided not to press charges despite 'strong indictions' the player had transferred the equivalent of £20,000 to one of Rio's most notorious drug lords.
Adriano denied the accusation, saying the money was to buy food baskets for poor families.
In February this year, Adriano's driving license was suspended after he refused to take a breathalyser test after he was stopped by the police while leaving another nightclub party.
