A photo handed out by the college shows Kafeel (left) with batchmates. (AP)

Kafeel Ahmed didn’t seem the least bit angry as a young engineering student.

Instead, according to former teachers and students, the 27-year-old Indian engineer — who is now in a Scottish hospital with critical burns after ramming a jeep into the Glasgow airport terminal— was a brilliant but shy young man who could be reduced to tears by teasing.

“He was very quiet and did not really mingle much with students or teachers outside the classroom,” said D. Abdul Budan, the head of the mechanical engineering department at the University Brahmappa Devendrappa Tavanappanavar College of Engineering in Davangere, a small south Indian town.

“He was a very good student.... His record is excellent. He was a simple and well-behaved boy... there were no signs that he may turn to terror,” said P.M. Prabhuswamy, who taught Kafeel in the second of his four years on this charming, tree-lined campus.

Kafeel’s religious views may have turned radical later, but people saw little sign of it here. “I didn’t even realise he was a Muslim initially... only later, when I learnt his name, I realised that he was Muslim,” Prabhuswamy added.

K.V. Arun, a young teacher at the college who was two years ahead of Kafeel as a student, said he was nervous during his first month at school. “The ragging here is not very serious. Mostly asking new students to sing or dance. But he was always very nervous during that time and once or twice he even started crying,” Arun said.

College records show that Kafeel ranked fifth in a graduating class of nearly 400, earning a degree in mechanical engineering. The photograph on his college application shows a serious, bespectacled young man just shy of his 18th birthday.

Kafeel, who set himself on fire after crashing into the airport terminal, was related to two of the other suspects. His brother, Sabeel Ahmed, 26, who is a doctor, was arrested in Liverpool. Another Indian suspect, Mohammed Haneef, is a distant cousin of the Ahmed brothers.

The Ahmed brothers were raised in a moderately religious family but after they both moved to Britain, they no longer went to their neighbourhood mosque when they returned on visits, local religious leaders said. Media reports say they had become members of a more radical Muslim group, the Tablighi Jamaat.

British police have not yet formally arrested Kafeel, who is in hospital with 90 per cent burns. Doctors attending to him said on condition of anonymity that he was unlikely to survive.

Haneef detention

The Law Council of Australia and the Amnesty International criticised the continued detention of Mohammed Haneef, saying the law was “not operating fairly”. The police custody, extended thrice already, ends on Friday.