Jammu: A special court on Tuesday set free Shafat Ahmed Shangloo, who was arrested by the CBI a day before in connection with the 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiyya Sayeed, the daughter of the then Union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.
The court refused to grant Shangloo’s custody to the CBI for questioning in connection with the kidnapping that occurred on December 8, 1989.
Rejecting the CBI plea for his custody, the special court noted that there was no mention of him in the charge sheet filed by the agency.
The agency had sought the custody of Shangloo, arrested in the 35-year-old case, in the TADA court in Jammu, claiming that he had been absconding all these years.
Arrested on Monday by the CBI for allegedly being part of a conspiracy hatched by members of the banned Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) to kidnap Rubaiyya, Shangloo carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head, according to the CBI.
Shangloo is alleged to be a close confidant of JKLF chief Yasin Malik.
“He was produced before the special TADA court. We have sought custody of the accused,” CBI lawyer S K Bhat said earlier.
In a statement on Monday after the arrest, the CBI said Shangloo conspired with Malik and others in committing offences under various sections of the Ranbir Penal Code and the TADA Act in 1989.
“The absconder was carrying a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head and was produced before the TADA Court in Jammu within the stipulated time as per law,” CBI’s spokesperson said.
According to officials, Shangloo was allegedly an office-bearer of JKLF and handled its finances.
The CBI, along with Jammu and Kashmir Police, arrested Shangloo from his residence in the Nishat area of Srinagar.
Malik, who is serving a jail term in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in a terror funding case, is not being produced physically in court due to a Ministry of Home Affairs order restricting his movement.
Pertinently, during the court hearings in the case, Sayeed had identified four other accused, besides Malik, as being involved in her kidnapping.
She was abducted from near Lal Ded Hospital in Srinagar on December 8, 1989, and was freed five days later after the then V P Singh government, which was supported by the BJP at the Centre, released five JKLF terrorists in exchange.
Now living in Tamil Nadu, Sayeed is listed as a prosecution witness by the CBI, which took over the investigation in 1990.
In order to expedite the trial, the CBI had appointed its senior counsel Monika Kohli as the chief prosecutor after framing charges against Malik in the much-publicised cases related to the Sayeed’s abduction and killing of four IAF personnel in Srinagar more than three decades ago.
Malik, 56, was sentenced by a special NIA court in May last year. He was arrested in early 2019 in connection with the 2017 terror-funding case registered by the NIA.
A special TADA court has already framed charges against Malik and nine others in the kidnapping case.
