The CBI has suffered a major setback in the nearly 36-year-old case of kidnapping of Rubia Sayeed, daughter of former Chief Minister and then Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Shafaat Ahmed Shanglu, arrested in the case, was released by the Special TADA Court of Jammu on Tuesday after refusing to hand him over to the agency’s custody.
Shafaat is considered close and trusted to Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik. Last Monday, CBI had arrested him from his residence in Nishat, Srinagar. A reward of Rs 10 lakh was also announced on him in the Rubia Saeed kidnapping case. On Tuesday, CBI presented him in the special TADA court. The CBI had sought Shafat’s custody in connection with the investigation into the kidnapping case, but the court rejected the application citing that nothing was found in the charge sheet of the investigating agency against him.
However, CBI lawyer SK Bhatt said – We had presented Shafaat in the special TADA court for his custody. We are waiting for the court order. On the other hand, Yasin Malik is serving a sentence in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in the terror funding case. He is not being produced in the court due to an order of the Home Ministry. In this order his movement has been banned. Malik, 56, was sentenced by a special court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in May last year. He was arrested in early 2019 in a 2017 terror-funding case registered by the NIA.
this was the case
On December 8, 1989, Rubia Sayeed, daughter of the then Union Home Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, was kidnapped from near Lalded Hospital in Srinagar. Five days later, Rubiya was freed by the then VP Singh government. In return, five terrorists had to be released.
