The eight-strong England badminton team unanimously voted to fly home from the World Championships in Hyderabad yesterday to suggestions they may have "over-reacted" to terrorist threats.

Two Scottish players due to compete today declined the offer of flights home and voted to stay.

Commonwealth bronze medallist Susan Egelstaff, and Alistair Casey, both from Glasgow, are in action in the women's and men's singles. "When I offered to fix flights home, they said they wanted to stay and play," said Dan Travers, the team coach and former Commonwealth doubles gold medallist. "Hopefully when they go on court they can put it out of their heads.

"They're quite concerned that England have left, but after all, no other country has withdrawn, and we have been assured the threat of terrorism is no greater now than it was two or even six months ago. We have had meetings with the security people, and have been reassured.

"I'm not in any way criticising England. I understand why people would be apprehensive, but were are assured that local media reports have been blown out of all proportion."

Speaking to the BBC, Badmintonscotland chief executive Anne Smillie suggested the England contingent had "perhaps over-reacted ... I don't necessarily think they've made the right decision.

"Certainly our Scottish players and our team manager feel confident that the security is at its best. They've been well looked after and have no intention of coming home."

Travers, coach and manager of the Scottish team in India, said he had spoken with the Australian in charge of security. "He said the threat level is no greater now than at any other time of the year. But everyone is now running scared. Because England have gone home, everyone is panicking."

England's alarm was sparked by a local newspaper citing a "specific terrorist threat" from a Pakistan-based Islamic extremist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure) who are resisting Indian control in Kashmir.

Travers described the immediate overt presence of several armed police, and said the local Police Commissioner, Prabhakar Reddy, had tried to allay fears. He spoke of 1000 police officials and commandos, including experts trained to deal with terror threats, being assigned to the event.

"There is no specific input of an attack,said Reddy. "However, police are geared up to meet any eventuality."

The country's Home Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram reiterated that there was no specific threat to the event, and federal officials had only sent a general alert to local police. However Friday is national independence day, which would normally call for heightened security.

Adrian Christy, CEO of Badminton England, said they had listened to advice from the Foreign Office and British High Commission, and a statement spoke of "concerns about the English team potentially being a target of attack in the event of a terrorist act."

However the Foreign Office said the decision to come home had been "entirely Badminton England's".

The event had been moved to Hyderabad because the planned facility, to be used for the Commonwealth Games next year, was not ready in time. Inevitably, England's edginess has raised further fears about Delhi where the Games open on October 3.

Australia, New Zealand and Wales had expressed concerns about travelling after a spate of security alarms.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has allegedly been responsible for a bomb attack in Delhi and an armed assault on parliament, as well as the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008 which killed at least 166 people. And in Pakistan the Sri Lankan test team was machine-gunned by terrorists and several police lost their lives.

Commonwealth Games Scotland have visited Delhi with security experts from the Metropolitan Police.

They say they will continue to monitor the situation over the next 15 months.