NEW DELHI - KAFEEL Ahmed, the man suspected of driving a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport in a suicide-bombing effort, had appeared ready for a flaming exit from the world.

His parents, Dr Maqbool Ahmed and Dr Zakia Ahmed, had been told he was involved in a 'confidential project about global warming' which involved much travel.

Calling home to Bangalore shortly before mounting his failed attempt on the airport, the PhD student from Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge, in the UK told them he would be incommunicado for a week.

His first 'presentation', he said, had failed. Now he was about to make a second one.

'Wish me luck,' he told his mother.

Ahmed is now in a Scottish hospital with little chance that he will survive the severe burns that cover 90 per cent of his body.

His younger brother Sabeel, a doctor in Cheshire, has been detained for suspected abetment, and so has their relative, Mohammad Haneef, who worked at the Gold Coast Hospital in Brisbane, Australia.

The parents of the two brothers, both medical doctors who live in Bangalore's upper-middle class Banashankari area, are in shock.

So is much of India, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The world, including US President George W. Bush, had once marvelled at how India, with its Hindu majority and 150 million Muslims, had not produced Al-Qaeda supporters of any significance.

Now, it is evident that Osama bin Laden is not without support in this country. That holds true even in peaceful southern India, which has largely escaped the communal tensions seen frequently in the north.

What is even more surprising is that there is little to suggest that either Ahmed or his brother had suffered any of the indignities which could trigger passions strong enough to lead men towards religion-oriented terrorism.

While Muslim Indians tend to find comfort in living close to each other in small enclaves, Banashankari, where Ahmed's family lives in South Bangalore, is a mixed locality.

Without question, the brothers would have grown up playing with children from the many faiths which make up India's most globalised city of Bangalore, including Hindus, Christians and Jews.

Born in Jordan, where their parents worked before returning to India a quarter century ago, both Ahmed and his brother Sabeel received excellent education.

Ahmed is an engineer and his brother is a doctor - the two most highly regarded professions in India. Their only sister, Sadia, is a medical student.

Ahmed has been described by his peers as friendly and studious. He has a mechanical engineering degree from Karnataka state's Kuvempu University, where he was ranked fourth with an average score of 87 per cent.

According to a report yesterday in Britain's Guardian, Ahmed travelled to Belfast, Ireland, in 2001 to do a Masters of Philosophy in aeronautical engineering.

He was reported to have completed the course in 2003 and remained in Northern Ireland until 2004.

He went on to do a PhD in computational fluid dynamics at Anglia Polytechnic.

At some point, he grew close to another doctor named Bilal Talal Abdulla, a British-born Iraqi. Bilal Talal accompanied Ahmed on his Glasgow mission.

Investigators suspect that Ahmed may have tried to use his skills in fluid dynamics in the failed bombings in London and Glasgow.

In February 2006, a man by the name Kafeel Ahmed organised a Chechnya Day protest meeting at Bangalore's Crescent School. The theme of that meeting was Muslims In Crisis.

Now, police are trying to establish whether that Kafeel was the same person as the Glasgow bomber.

The Ahmed brothers returned to India earlier this year. The family has told police that Ahmed then went back to the UK on May 5 and his brother followed a week later.

In recent years, particularly since the July 16 terror attack on Mumbai commuter trains, Indian police have been on guard against an attack on Bangalore.

But few people would have imagined that the city would be the epicentre of an overseas terror plot, or that the likely breeding ground for this scheme was within a respectable home, among the city's upper class.

velloor@sph.com.sg