The Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday arrested a man in Srinagar for his alleged role in the 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The suspect, identified as Shafat Ahmad Shungloo, was named in the CBI chargesheet based on witness accounts and Rubaiya Sayeed’s own statements. He had been absconding for years and carried a reward of ₹10 lakh. He will now be produced before the TADA Court in Jammu.
The investigation has linked the abduction to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, with the operation led by JKLF chief Yasin Malik, who is already serving a sentence in Tihar Jail after his conviction in a terror-funding case. Rubaiya was abducted while travelling from Lal Chowk to her residence in Nawgaon, and the kidnappers contacted Mufti Mohammed Sayeed roughly two hours later to confirm they were holding her. The crisis ended when the Central government met the abductors’ demand to release five jailed militants in exchange for her freedom. Several of those militants later became involved in the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 to Kandahar.
Farooq Abdullah, who was Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir at the time, opposed the decision to free the militants, and he would again be Chief Minister during the later Kandahar hijacking. Reflecting on these events, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah remarked last year that the Rubaiya Sayeed exchange set a precedent that shaped the demands during the IC-814 crisis, arguing that the families of the hijacked passengers questioned why terrorists were released for a home minister’s daughter but not for their own loved ones.
