The Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Science to which the college is affiliated, however, said their computerised records revealed only three persons with the name Mohammed Haneef in the past decade and only one graduating in the year 2002.

He is believed to have completed a post-graduation at the B R Ambedkar Medical College itself in 2003 before moving to the UK.

Residents at a local address provided for Haneef in the university records said he had shifted out in 2000. Haneef is reported to have been at the Halton Hospital at Runcor in Britain in 2005 before moving to Queensland in Australia to take up a position as a registrar at the Gold Coast Hospital.

Meanwhile, officials at the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences also claimed to have been able to only find a partial match to a second name supplied by the British media — said to be of a 26-year-old man arrested in Liverpool on Saturday.

“We were told that the name of a second doctor Mohammed Asif Ali, one year junior to Md Haneef had cropped up. Our records show only one Md Asif and another Md Naseem Ali as graduating in 2003. We are awaiting more details to verify this name,” Dr Sacchidanand said.

Local police said they would wait for more information to come in to begin investigations here.