The Hindu : National : Please pray for us, says Kafeel’s mother

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Friday, Jul 06, 2007
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Please pray for us, says Kafeel’s mother

Afshan Yasmeen

BANGALORE: “I only hope it is not my son. It was a different person who left Bangalore on May 5…” This is what Dr. Zakia Ahmed, mother of Kafeel Ahmed, told The Hindu on Thursday over telephone.

“But going by all that is being shown on television, it looks like it is him. Allah! What have I done to face such distress in my life? Please pray for us,” Dr. Zakia said. This was even as TV channels were beginning to confirm the identity of the driver of the car bomb in the terror attack at Glasgow last week.

Locked inside their residence, the family members were besieged by mediapersons and camera crew for most of the day.

On Wednesday too, the media camped out before the well-kept home in an upper middle-class locality in Banashankari following reports that their younger son, Sabeel Ahmed, had been detained by authorities in the United Kingdom. The doctor couple willingly spoke to the media.

But it was a different story on Thursday when news emerged of their older son’s involvement in the terror plot.

The dignified mother, vociferous and articulate the day before, seemed to have crumbled under the pressure of the news that her son was in a critical condition with 90 per cent burns.

“Kafeel was a rank student and he had gone to the U.K. to pursue a Ph.D. in Computational Fluid Dynamics. Mujhe pata nahin kisne mere bachon ko gumrah kiya hai [I don’t know who led my children astray],” she said.

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