A court in India has rejected a petition filed by a former Halton Hospital dctor to dismiss charges in a terror plot case. 

Sabeel Ahmed was charged with conspiring to kill Hindu leaders and government officials in 2012.

The case, which was registered in the city of Bengaluru, saw 14 other accused persons convicted and subsequently released in 2016 after they pled guilty.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) stated that the accused had procured illegal arms and ammunition for targeted killings of important members of the Hindu community in Bengaluru, Hubballi in Karnataka and Nanded in Maharashtra.

Ahmed, who worked as a Locum at Halton Hospital in 2006, was deported from Saudi Arabia in August 2020 in connection with the alleged terror plot. 

According to reports in India, Ahmed filed a petition with The High Court of Karnataka to dismiss the charges, stating that he had been acquitted by a Delhi court in an identical case, in which he faced allegations of attempting to recruit Indians for Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), a branch of the Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda. However, the High Court concluded that the charges before the Delhi court were not same as those invoked against him in Bengaluru.

The case comes after Ahmed was arrested by anti-terror police in Bengaluru in May in connection with the bombing of a café in the city in March.

At least 10 people were injured in the blast, which was reportedly conducted using an improvised explosive device (IED). 

Reports in India say Ahmed was one of five people arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on suspicion of aiding the main suspects in the case.

Ahmed is the younger brother of Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a Jeep laden with petrol and gas canisters into Glasgow Airport in June 2007.

Kafeel Ahmed died after driving a car bomb into Glasgow Airport in June, 2007 (Image: PA)Kafeel Ahmed died after driving a car bomb into Glasgow Airport in June, 2007 (Image: PA)

The doctor, who worked at Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Trust, was jailed for 18 months in April 2008 at London’s Old Bailey for withholding information about the failed suicide car bomb attack, after pleading guilty to failing to disclose information that could have prevented an act of terrorism.

He was then deported to India after his release.

Ahmed told police that his brother was in Iceland carrying out research on global warming, instead of admitting that he knew of his suicide mission. 

He continued to mislead detectives investigating the attack for five days and failed to tell them his brother had texted him shortly before driving into Glasgow Airport, directing him to the “drafts” section of an email account. 

When Ahmed logged in an hour after the attack, he found his brother’s suicide note and Islamic will as well as instructions to lie to police about his whereabouts.

Kafeel Ahmed died at Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary weeks after the Glasgow Airport attack. He had suffered burns to 90% of his body when he was arrested.

Fellow perpetrator, Iraqi doctor Bilal Talal Samad Abdullah, a passenger in the Jeep, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in December 2009 and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 32 years.

Abdullah worked less than three miles from the Glasgow Airport terminal building at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Following Bilal Abdullah’s conviction, Strathclyde Police Assistant Chief Constable Campbell Corrigan said the terrorists had “failed in their attempts to cause mayhem and mass murder at the airport”. 

The day before the attack, Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed drove to London from Glasgow in two cars packed with gas canisters, petrol and thousands of nails, before leaving the vehicles outside a nightclub near Piccadilly Circus.

The explosives failed to detonate, and with a police manhunt under way to trace them, the pair then made the decision to launch a suicide attack on Glasgow Airport. 

In a “confession” in 2021, Sabeel Ahmed revealed that while he was living and working in England, “he was in constant contact with his elder brother Kafeel Ahmed and during that time Kafeel used to constantly talk to him about Jihad, citing the bad condition of Muslims in the world.”

Hindi News described Ahmed at the time as India’s “richest terrorist” who was “probably the only highly educated terrorist” in the country “whose almost entire family was in the medical profession”.