Dr Zakia Ahmed, mother of Sabeel Ahmed, the 26-year-old arrested in Liverpool on June 30, said: “I spoke to him almost everyday. The last time we spoke I told him to take care. I told him lots of things were happening in the UK. It was Friday I think. He said he was safe, busy at work.”

Sitting in the living room of their upper middle-class home in south Bangalore, Sabeel Ahmed’s elderly parents, Maqbool Ahmed and Zakia, a highly respected doctor couple, said they were shocked when their son called from the UK this Monday to say he had been arrested and was seeking arrangement of legal help.

“We just had a couple of minutes to talk to him. He did not say on what basis he was arrested. We only had time to inquire about his health,” Dr Zakia said.

She said her discussions with friends in UK suggested “there is not much against him”. “It will, however, take some time for him to be cleared, we were told. He will be released honourably, I know, I am his mother,” said Dr Zakia who until recently ran a nursing home with her husband in south Bangalore. They have two other children — a younger son pursuing a PhD and daughter.

Describing Sabeel as “easy going, calm person”, with multiple interests including travelling, Dr Zakia said he went to the UK in August 2004 to pursue further studies. “He was in his senior internship and looking to specialize in surgery. He liked to wander about. He recently travelled to Portugal to deliver a lecture,” she said.

According to Dr Zakia, the other doctor detained in Australia, Mohammed Haneef, was a good friend of her son and the families of the two were also closely associated. “We know them very well. They are good friends. It is the same thing that is happening to both of them,” Dr Zakia said. She said it was likely her son took his friend’s mobile phone after Haneef left the UK in 2006.

“We did not talk about the case, I didn’t ask him, I didn’t have the time,” she said.

Like Mohammed Haneef, Sabeel Ahmed also studied at the B R Ambedkar Medical College in Bangalore, which is affiliated to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences.

Sabeel joined the college on a merit seat after obtaining 73 per cent marks in his pre-university course in 1998, a year after Haneef. Unlike Haneef who performed meritoriously through medical college, Sabeel needed double attempts to clear the first three years of the course. He scored 55 per cent marks in his final year in 2003.

The family of Mohammed Haneef, meanwhile, remained deeply stressed at their sparse middle-class home in east Bangalore following reports of the extension of his detention in Australia by 48 hours.

Haneef’s brother Mohammed Shoaib Azhar, an engineering student, said he had spoke to him at around 4 pm IST on Monday. “He told me he was coming on a Singapore Airlines flight, landing here on Tuesday. He wanted to be picked up at the airport,” Shoaib said.

According to the family, Haneef was rushing to Bangalore to see his child born on June 26 under a Caesarean section at the Sagar Apollo Hospital at Bangalore. “Three days after she was born, she was diagnosed as having jaundice. This worried Haneef and he applied for leave under an emergency category at the hospital in Australia,” Shoaib said, adding that Haneef was also keen to see the 10-day old daughter of his sister Sumayya, a PG degree holder in biotechnology.

Haneef is also reported to have called his wife soon after obtaining leave to announce his trip home. He also reportedly told colleagues at the Gold Coast Hospital that he was going home to see his wife and baby.

“We never expected something like this to happen. We have no records to prove he was not leaving Australia to be with his family. Studies and reading were his main passion, he had few friends after college,” Shoaib said.

“His aim in going to UK and Australia was to study further. He intended to return at some point and work in India. There can be no evidence against him. There were no hidden sides to his character,” sister Sumaiyya said. Neighbours, friends and former medical schoolmates of Haneef said the detained doctor was a quiet, mild mannered individual who largely kept to himself and his work.