August 03, 2007	Friday	Rajab 18, 1428

BANGALORE, Aug 2: A senior Indian police officer on Thursday dismissed as false a report that a local doctor detained in Australia had links with Osama bin-Laden's Al Qaeda network.

Australia's SBS television late on Wednesday said it had obtained an unsigned and undated “dossier,” apparently compiled by the Bangalore police, which appeared to suggest Mohamed Haneef had “alleged links” with Al Qaeda.

“It's not true,” said Gopal Hosur, joint commissioner of police in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, Haneef's hometown.

The Bangalore police's role had been limited to conducting a “preliminary inquiry” into the background of Haneef, 27, who returned home Sunday night after more than three weeks of detention in Australia, said Hosur.

The police “found nothing incriminating” against the doctor, said Hosur, who has led local investigations into the role of three Bangalore-based Indians suspected in the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow in late June.

No one answered the phone at Haneef's house on Thursday. He said on Wednesday he wouldn't comment on any new allegations until his case for the reinstatement of his work visa in Australia was heard by a court there on Aug 8.

Haneef returned home after Australian police dropped charges that he had “recklessly” supported the car bombing plot by giving his mobile-phone SIM card to one of two cousins implicated in the conspiracy.

Australian police chief Mick Keelty said earlier on Thursday that he had not heard of allegations of Al Qaeda links against Haneef — who was freed from custody on Friday after charges against him collapsed — but said they should be investigated.

“We don't have anything that positively says that in Australia but of course it is an avenue of inquiry and if that is what the Indians are saying it needs to be followed through,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“It emphasises the fact that this is an ongoing investigation, there are a lot of avenues of inquiry that are still to be followed through,” he added.

SBS's Dateline programme showed a four-page document which it said it had obtained from a senior Indian policeman in Bangalore.

Under the heading “Organisational set up,” it contained the phrase “alleged links with Al Qaeda.” The purported dossier, apparently compiled only after Haneef was detained as he tried to leave Australia on July 2, concluded with an overall assessment that contained a startling assumption about Haneef's links.—AFP