Sabeel, Kafeel had joined Tabligi Jamaat: Bangalore police

Police in Bangalore say Sabeel Ahmed and Kafeel Ahmed - two Indians who are said to be brothers and are prime suspects in the failed terror plots in Britain - had joined the Tabligi Jamaat missionary sect.

Bangalore Police have been making discreet enquiries on their own about the two brothers and Mohammad Haneef, who was detained in Brisbane, Australia, in connection with the foiled London-Glasgow terror attacks last week. While Sabeel and Haneef are doctors, Kafeel is an engineer.

Police are trying to ascertain whether the three were involved with any terror groups when they were in Bangalore or got into the act after going abroad.

Kafeel is said to have driven the jeep bomb into the Glasgow airport and suffered 90 per cent burns in the explosion. Sabeel is his brother, say city police, while Haneef is their second cousin.

Bangalore Police Commissioner N Achut Rao says neither British nor Australian police have approached them for help in the probe and whatever investigation is being done in Bangalore is on their own.

However, senior city police officials believe it is only a matter of time before either or both countries make a request for information from the city police on the three suspects.

What is a matter of concern to city police in Bangalore, say senior officials who did not want to be named, is the report that Kafeel and Sabeel had joined a missionary sect, Tabligi Jamaat, and had differences with the local mosque authorities on the way prayers and preaching were conducted there.

The two brothers stayed with their parents, both retired doctors, at Banashankari, a middle class locality in Bangalore.

Samiullah, secretary at the Jamia Hazrat Tipu Masjid at Banashankari, told reporters on Thursday evening, that the brothers "used to visit the mosque as children but after they joined the Tabligi Jammat, they became different".

Samiullah said: "As Indians we follow the Indian form of preaching and cannot accept any other form."

City police said they will pursue this lead to see what the two brothers were up to before going abroad.

Police here paid their first visit to the Banashankari residence of the Ahmeds late on Thursday evening to seek more information from the family on the activities of their sons.

A team of police personnel, including a policewoman, led by Deputy Commissioner SR Ravikante Gowda spent nearly two hours at the house. Gowda declined to give any details of the information his team had gathered.

There is despair in the Ahmed house, with father Maqbool Ahmed, mother Zakhia Ahmed and sister Sadia Kauser losing hope of Sabeel's early release.

Zakhia Ahmed had been insisting for the last two days that the driver of the jeep driven to Glasgow airport was not her son Kafeel Ahmed. But with more evidence pouring in to establish that it was indeed him, she said she can only pray to the Almighty.

Maqbool Ahmed had recently suffered from a heart ailment and hence it was mostly Zakhia who had been interacting with the media.

The mood was no better among the family members of Mohammad Haneef as his detention with police in Australia has now been extended till Monday.