TADA court summons Rubaiya Sayeed in her 1989 abduction case
RUBAIYA SAYEED, A MEDICAL STUDENT AT THE TIME, WAS KIDNAPPED IN SRINAGAR BY THE JAMMU KASHMIR LIBERATION FRONT ON DEC 8, 1989
Ravi Krishnan Khajuria
JAMMU: More than three decades after her sensational abduction in 1989 marked the beginning of separatist terrorism in the Kashmir Valley, Rubaiya Sayeed has been summoned by a Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court that is hearing a case about separatist Yasin Malik’s alleged involvement in the incident.
Rubaiya Sayeed, now 55 years old, is the daughter of former Union home minister and former Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) chief minister, the late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. She is the sister of former J&K CM and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief, Mehbooba Mufti.
“The TADA court has summoned Rubaiya Sayeed on July 15 at Jammu in her kidnapping case involving JKLF militant turned separatist Yasin Malik,” advocate Monika Kohli, who represented CBI, said on Friday. This is the first time that Rubaiya Sayeed has been asked to appear in the case.
Rubaiya, who lives in Chennai, was listed as a prosecution witness by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took over the probe in January 2019.
Rubaiya Sayeed, a medical student at the time, was kidnapped in Srinagar by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front on December 8, 1989. Sayeed, the first and only Muslim home minister of India, was in the office from December 1989 to November 1990 in the VP Singh government. Rubaiya was eventually freed on December 13 that year after the government agreed to release five arrested militants in return for her release.
Malik, the JKLF chief who was this week sentenced to life imprisonment in a terror funding case, is an accused in the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case.
On January 11, 2021, the TADA court ordered that charges be framed against Yasin Malik and nine others -- Ali Mohamad Mir, Mohammad Zaman Mir, Iqbal Ahmad Gandroo, Javed Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Rafiq, Pahloo alias Nana Ji alia Saleem , Manzoor Ahmed Sofi, Wajahat Bashir, Mehraj-ud-din Sheikh and Showkat Ahmad Bakshi.
The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, or TADA, was anti-terrorism law that was in force between 1985 and 1995. Several cases registered under it are still in various stages of the legal process.
According to the CBI case, the accused kidnapped Rubaiya Sayeed with an ulterior motive of getting five terrorists released. Malik was the one who played a key role in the entire kidnapping, it alleged.
The TADA Court observed in January that sufficient grounds existed to draw the prima facie presumption that of the 10 accused, seven, including Malik , committed offences under various TADA sections. In March 2020, the TADA also framed charges against Malik and six others allegedly involved in the killing of four unarmed IAF officials in 1990.