Australia’s chief prosecutor is to review the case against an Indian doctor charged with links to last month’s terror plot in Britain amid widespread concerns that police have bungled the investigation.

Damian Bugg, QC, Australia’s Director of Public Prosecutions, announced that he was taking the highly unusual step of reviewing all the evidence against Mohamed Haneef before it could be heard in court.

Dr Haneef, 27, was detained on July 2, days after the attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, as he was about to board a flight to India from Brisbane. He has insisted that his one-way ticket was paid for by his father-in-law so that he could return to India to see his sick wife, who had recently given birth to their first child.

Dr Haneef had been working since last September at the Gold Coast hospital in Queensland, where he was highly regarded by senior staff.

There has been a groundswell of public sympathy in Australia for him as a series of flaws in the police case have been exposed – notably that police asserted wrongly to a court that a telephone Sim card owned by Dr Haneef had been found inside the Jeep used to attack Glasgow airport.

The Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, has said that the national police force had been made to look like “Keystone cops” because of their conduct of the investigation.

Mr Buggsaid yesterday: “There are matters which have developed as this case has progressed which I am examining, and a broader review of the available material and the proceedings to date is the best way to examine these matters.”

Mr Bugg has the power to dismiss the charges against Dr Haneef.

The latest development follows a series of media leaks and public, legal and political criticism about the case against Dr Haneef, who is charged with recklessly supporting terrorism by providing a relative in Britain with his mobile phone Sim card.

Dr Haneef has not entered a plea and remains detained after the Government cancelled his visa and ordered that he be kept in an immigration detention centre, thwarting a magistrate’s earlier ruling that he should be released on bail.

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