35 years after ex-Home Minister’s daughter Rubaiya Sayeed was abducted, CBI arrests an ‘absconder’

“The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested an absconder, Shafat Ahmed Shangloo, wanted in a 35-year-old CBI case relating to the kidnapping of Dr Rubiya Sayeed, D/o Shri Mufti Mohd. Sayeed, ex-Home Minister,” CBI said in an official release. “He will be produced before the TADA Court, Jammu, within the stipulated time as per law.”

The central investigation agency said that Shangloo “conspired with Yasin Malik and others in committing a crime” under various sections of RPC and TADA Act during the Year 1989. It said that he was “carrying a reward of Rs. 10 lacs on his head”.

The CBI had filed a chargesheet against two dozen people in the case related to the abduction of Sayeed. In 2021, the court in Jammu framed charges against 10 persons, including Malik. Two were already dead, and 12, including Shangloo, were absconding.

On December 8, 1989 — just six days after Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was sworn in as the Union Home Minister by the V P Singh government — Rubaiya Sayeed was travelling home in a passenger minibus. Then 23, Sayeed was interning with the Lal Ded Maternity Hospital in Srinagar and was returning home at Nowgam on the outskirts of Srinagar city. As the minibus reached a few hundred metres away from Mufti’s residence, four gunmen barged inside and abducted Sayeed at gunpoint. She was bundled into a waiting Maruti car and shifted to an undisclosed destination.

She was set free on December 13 after the government released five jailed militants.

While a case into the abduction was registered at Saddar Police station of Srinagar on December 8, 1989, under section 364 of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), section 3 of TADA and section 3/25 of the Arms Act, the charges in the case were framed three decades later in 2019.

In January 1999, the then TADA court ordered the release on bail of three accused – Showkat Ahmad Bakhshi, Manzoor Ahmad Sofi and Mohamamd Iqbal Gundroo. The court contended that the accused had been in jail for nine years without trial. By then, Malik was already out on bail.

In 2009, Malik petitioned the J&K High Court to transfer the case from Jammu to Srinagar. The J&K High Court stayed proceedings against Malik in the designated TADA court in Jammu.

The CBI successfully petitioned for the vacation of the stay, and in 2021, the TADA court in Jammu framed charges against 10 people, including Malik.

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