Officials at the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in Bangalore found a match in their records for a suspect detained in Australia for alleged links to the UK car bomb terror plot.

The office of the Registrar of Evaluation at the university found records for a medical student matching the name Mohammed Haneef and the year of his graduation, 2002, on the basis of inquiries made by the media in Australia.

Dr S Sacchidanand, Registrar of Evaluation, said authorities in the two countries interested in Haneef’s links had not directly sought the information. He was detained at Brisbane airport while waiting to fly to India via Kuala Lumpur.

On the basis of the name provided and the year of graduation, Mohammed Haneef, now 27, has been identified as a permanent resident of Mudigere town in Chikamagalur district, located some 250 km from Bangalore.

The son of a Mudigere schoolteacher, the late Abdul Sami Khaleel, Haneef obtained a medical seat in 1997 on merit after scoring 83 per cent marks in his pre-university course in the town of Ujjire near Mangalore in Karnataka.

He studied at the Dr B R Ambedkar Medical College in Bangalore, always clearing his medical exams in the first attempt. In his first and second year at the college, he scored first class marks of 699/1000 and 949/1400 respectively. In his final two years, he notched second-class marks of 575/900 and 1027/1750.

College authorities said there were at least five persons with the name Mohammed Haneef in the college during the period 1997-2002.

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