By Neena Bhandari, IANS
Sydney : Suspended Indian doctor Mohammad Asif Ali, former colleague and flatmate of freed terror suspect Muhammad Haneef, was to fly home to Bangalore Thursday night after facing the charge of lying about his past jobs.
Asif Ali, 26, was suspended with pay from the hospital July 31 after allegedly lying about his employment history and found to be in possession of rubber stamps carrying the name and details of different specialists at a medical college in Bangalore.
It is also alleged that Asif Ali’s CV included up to 12 months of hospital work in India that he never performed.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) returned Asif Ali’s passport to him Thursday morning after confiscating it and interrogating him over his relationship with Haneef.
Haneef, 26, had been held for aiding terror plots in London and Glasgow but was freed last month after the charge was dropped.
Meanwhile, the Australian Associated Press agency quoted the acting director-general of Queensland Health, Andrew Wilson, as saying Asif Ali remained under investigation but was free to leave the country.
Asif Ali’s lawyer Simone Healy told The Courier Mail: “His family are very worried about him and he’s anxious to get home and just make sure they are okay. He is pretty stressful and pretty upset, however, he is going to miss his colleagues at Queensland Health… and he is hopeful of coming back.
“He’s very upset about what’s happened in the past couple of months and he’s very sorry for any mistake he may have made in the past which may have contributed to it,” Healy told the newspaper.
AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty had told reporters earlier this month, “(Asif Ali) is a person of interest to us. He has remained so since day one and he will continue to be a person of interest until we satisfy ourselves that we know everything that we should know about Dr. Ali.”
Asif Ali graduated from Mysore University in 2001 and had directly applied to the Gold Coast Hospital after meeting a doctor from the hospital in Britain in 2006.