All set for trial in 31-yr-old Rubaiya kidnapping case

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 12

The stage is now set for trial to begin in a 31-year-old kidnapping case involving Rubaiya Sayeed — daughter of then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and sister of PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti — as a special TADA court in Jammu has ordered framing of charges against Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Mohammd Yasin Malik and nine others on a chargesheet filed by the CBI.

The 1989 incident

Rubaiya Sayeed — a daughter of then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and sister of PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti — was kidnapped by Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front members on December 8, 1989, from Srinagar to ensure the release of their associates lodged in different jails.

Officials here in the CBI said, Special TADA judge Sunit Gupta had on Monday ordered the framing of charges against Malik and nine others — Ali Mohammad Mir, Mohammad Zaman Mir, Iqbal Ahmad Gandroo, Javed Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Rafiq Pahloo, Manzoor Ahmed Sofi, Wajahat Bashir, Mehraj-ud-Din Sheikh and Showkat Ahmad Bakshi. Once the process gets completed the trial in the case would begin, they said.

Kohli appointed as chief prosecutor

• The CBI on Tuesday said it had appointed its senior counsel Monika Kohli as the chief prosecutor in the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction and assassination of four IAF personnel in Srinagar cases in which charges have been framed against JKLF chief Yasin Malik.
• The officials here said the Department of Personnel and Training had conveyed the approval of the competent authority for engagement of Kohli as senior special prosecutor and SK Bhat (retired ALA/CBI) as special public prosecutor in place of Pavitar Singh Bhardwaj and Bansi Lal Bhat for a period of three years.

Malik is presently lodged in Tihar Jail, Delhi, after he was arrested by the anti-terror probe agency National Investigation Agency (NIA) in April 2019 in connection with a terror-funding case.

The officials said the CBI in its chargesheet had name two dozen persons as accused in the case. Out of them, charges were being framed against 10 of them, as Mohammad Rafiq Dar and Mushtaq Ahmad Lone — both top commanders of the JKLF — were dead and 12 others absconding.

The absconders included Halima, Javed Iqbal Mir, Mohammad Yaqub Pandit, Riyaz Ahmad Bhat, Khursheed Ahmad Dar, Basharat Rehman Noori, Tariq Ashraf, Shafat Ahmad Shangloo, Manzoor Ahmad, Gulam Mohammad Taploo, Abdul Majeed Bhat and Nissar Ahmad Bhat, they said.

“…From the confessional statements of the accused persons recorded, either under Section 164 of the CrPC or under Section 15 of the TADA Act, supported with the statements of the abductee Rubaiya Sayeed and other prosecution witnesses, it has been prima facie proved that the accused persons have hatched a criminal conspiracy to kidnap the abductee with sole objective to get their persons released from the custody after having negotiation with the Government of J&K as well as Government of India and the accused persons had also succeeded in their nefarious designs and got their persons released from the custody,” the Special Judge is reported to have said.