Jammu, Dec 2: In a setback to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a special TADA court in Jammu on Tuesday ordered the release of Shafat Ahmed Shangloo, who had been arrested a day earlier in connection with the 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiyya Sayeed, daughter of the then Union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.
The court rejected the CBI’s plea seeking his custody for interrogation, noting that Shangloo’s name did not figure in the chargesheet filed earlier in the case.
Shangloo was arrested on Monday for allegedly being part of the conspiracy hatched by members of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) to abduct Rubaiyya on December 8, 1989. The kidnapping ended five days later after authorities released five jailed JKLF militants to secure her freedom.
According to the CBI, Shangloo had been absconding for decades and carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh. He is alleged to be a close associate of JKLF chief Yasin Malik and reportedly handled the organisation’s finances.
He was arrested from his residence in Srinagar’s Nishat area in a joint operation by the CBI and Jammu and Kashmir Police and produced in the TADA court within the required time frame.
In its plea, the CBI argued that Shangloo’s custodial interrogation was necessary, but the court disagreed, ordering his release instead.
Malik, a co-accused in the case and currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in a terror funding case, is not being produced physically in court due to restrictions imposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
