Earlier we were proud to say we were from Bangalore. Now we are hesitant. Why did you do this, man?” asks a scrap posted by a young Indian, UK-based doctor on 26-year-old Sabeel Ahmed’s page on a popular social networking website.

The scrap, posted following Dr Sabeel Ahmed’s arrest as one of the medical professionals connected to the failed UK terror plot, presumes guilt. But it also expresses concern that terrorism could replace technology as a pseudonym for Bangalore.

At the B.R. Ambedkar Medical College in east Bangalore, where Dr Sabeel Ahmed and his cousin Dr Mohammed Haneef, detained in Australia in connection with the plot, studied, there is similar exasperation that former students entangled in terrorism have brought the college into disrepute. “It is really shocking. We really don’t know what’s been happening” says college principal Dr B.R. Ramesh.

In the Bangalore home of Sabeel and his brother Kafeel, the man who allegedly drove a jeep into the Glasgow airport, there is disbelief too. Their father, Dr Maqbool Ahmed, a prominent citizen and member of the Jamait-I-Islami who was reportedly jailed during under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act during the Emergency period, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a few years ago and rarely speaks to outsiders these days.

Their mother, Dr Zakia Ahmed, is more in control but still in shock that it is her family that is under seige. While she still does not believe that Sabeel could be involved in the terror plot, she has told family friends and the police that television images of the burning man at the Glasgow airport resembled Kafeel. “I don’t know how this could have happened. They are very good boys. Someone has misguided him,” she says.

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