Mohammed Haneef’s performance while he studied MBBS at Dr B R Ambedkar Medical College here speaks of an academic career that slid down the hill year after year.
But Haneef’s cousin and junior in college, Sabeel Ahmed, had a consistent academic record. 
Sabeel’s elder brother Kafeel Ahmed, suspected to be the driver of the jeep that rammed into the terminal building at the Glasgow airport, was academically brilliant. Notes prepared by Kafeel, a 2000 batch student of mechanical engineering at Davangere UBDT College, are still in circulation among students at the college even seven years after he graduated. “Students have photocopies of his class notes and refer them even today,” a teacher of Kafeel said.
Kafeel’s most remarkable achievement at the college was his 87 pc score in ‘fine arts’ one of the engineering subjects. Teachers at the college still remember that it was unprecedented for anyone to score such high marks in the subject. Sabeel who secured 69.9 per cent in his phase-I MBBS ended up scoring only 58.68 per cent in the final phase and passed out with second class.
A look at the academic record of Haneef archived with the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) showed that the decline was steep in the phase-III, part-1 and 2 of MBBS.
Haneef scored 699/1,000 marks in Phase-I of MBBS in 1999. In the one-and-a-half year second phase he scored 949/1400, 575/900 in Phase-III, part-1 and 1,027/1,750 marks in part-2.
What could have affected his studies?  A batchmate who did not want to be named, felt that Haneef was distracted. “Not that it was obvious at that time, but thinking about it now, he did seem little disturbed in his final year at the college,” he said.
“Sabeel was a very fun loving person and did consistently good in his studies,” says Sabeel’s classmate Nitin. “It’s shocking that he could be involved in such activities,” he adds. Ahmed secured 54.8 per cent in Phase I, MBBS, 57.6 per cent in Phase-II, 58.7 pc in Phase III part-1 and 54.5 per cent in Phase III part-2.
RGUHS has no record of the duo having participated in any extra-curricular activities, games, or cultural events.