35 Years After Ex-Home Minister’s Daughter Was Abducted, CBI Arrests Absconder
Thirty-five years after the abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of former Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested a man who had been missing for decades in the case.
The accused, Shafat Ahmad Shangloo, is a resident of Srinagar and was wanted for allegedly helping the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in the kidnapping.
According to the CBI, Shangloo had been on the run for years and carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh for information leading to his arrest.
In an official statement, the agency said that he had “conspired with Yasin Malik and others” in planning and carrying out the abduction in 1989. The CBI will now produce him before the TADA Court in Jammu.
The kidnapping took place on December 8, 1989, just days after Mufti Mohammad Sayeed took charge as the Union Home Minister in the V P Singh government.
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At the time, 23-year-old Rubaiya Sayeed was working as an intern doctor at the Lal Ded Maternity Hospital in Srinagar. She was travelling home in a passenger minibus when four armed men stopped the vehicle near her residence in Nowgam.
They forced her out at gunpoint, put her into a waiting car, and took her to an unknown location.
The abduction triggered a major political crisis. Rubaiya was released five days later, on December 13, after the government freed five jailed militants, a decision that has remained controversial for decades.
A case was registered the same day at Saddar Police Station under sections of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), the TADA Act, and the Arms Act.
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However, progress in the investigation was slow. The CBI eventually filed a chargesheet against about two dozen people. Many of them were arrested in the early 1990s, but the trial moved slowly.
In 2021, after years of legal delays, the TADA court in Jammu framed charges against 10 accused, including JKLF chief Yasin Malik. By then, two of the accused had died, and 12 others, including Shangloo, were absconding.
Shangloo’s arrest now marks an important development in a case that has remained unresolved for more than three decades.
(With inputs from The Indian Express)
