Have patience, Haneef tells wife on phone

After a week of uncertainty, there was some hope for Firdous, the wife of Dr Haneef Mohammad who has been detained in Australia in connection with the terror plot in the United Kingdom.

On Wednesday morning, the Australian authorities permitted Haneef to make a telephone call to his wife.

Firdous said the call lasted just a minute. Her husband sounded calm and merely said, 'Mein khariyat mein hoon. Aap bas itminan rakhiye. Ghar mein sab ko bol deejiye (I am fine, don't worry, just have some patience, please inform everybody at home).'

Firdous, sounding quite relaxed, refused to comment further, stating that she had been advised against doing so.

Haneef, originally a resident of Mudigere, Chikmagalur, a district in Karnataka around 200 km from Bangalore, was detained at Brisbane airport just before he boarded a flight to India.

His family says Haneef was on his way to Bangalore to see his newborn child when he was detained. His second cousin Dr Sabeel Ahmed was detained in England, followed by the disclosure that the man who drove a flaming SUV into Glasgow airport in Scotland on June 30 was another cousin, Dr Kafeel Ahmed, Sabeel's brother.

Haneef's wife Firdous, an engineering graduate, had said at the time of his detention that she believes that her husband is innocent. She had given birth to a baby girl just four days before Haneef was detained. Haneef's sister Sumaiah too had given birth to a child around the same time.

Haneef, while in Bangalore, used to live with his mother, wife, sister and brother.

He did his MBBS at the Dr B R Ambedkar Medical College following which he left for Liverpool, Britain, where he worked for some time as a doctor. He then applied to the Gold Coast hospital in Queensland, Australia, and was selected.