SRINAGAR: The Central Bureau of Investigation faced sharp embarrassment on Tuesday when a special court in Jammu ordered the release of Shafat Ahmed Shangloo, accused in the 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, barely a day after the agency announced his arrest as a major breakthrough.
Photo Courtesy: Sunday
The Court of the 3rd Additional District and Sessions Judge (TADA/POTA), Jammu, according to news agency Kashmir Dot Com, rejected the CBI’s plea for judicial custody, ruling that there was no evidence to justify continued detention.
The order came less than 24 hours after the CBI issued a statement on December 1, 2025, claiming that Shangloo had been an absconder for 35 years and carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh. The agency had termed the arrest a significant development in a case tied to the early phase of the Kashmir insurgency.
The CBI alleged that Shangloo was a close associate and finance handler of the banned Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front and a conspirator with JKLF chief Yasin Malik in the 1989 abduction. However, the TADA court found no support for this claim upon examining the case records.
Advocate Shafat Ahmad Dar, representing Shangloo, said the CBI had sought judicial custody on the ground that the accused had been absconding for 35 years. When the court checked the file, he said, it found no such record.
The decision, delivered in the presence of Senior Additional Advocate General Monika Kohli and a Special Public Prosecutor for the CBI, indicated that the agency had failed to present new or convincing evidence either to establish that Shangloo was an absconder or to justify custody.
The CBI’s claims were further undermined by evidence showing that Shangloo had maintained a visible public presence in the Kashmir Valley. Reports and social media activity indicated he was active socially and had a consistent online profile.
Shangloo regularly posted photographs from social and family gatherings. His last public post, on November 29, two days before his arrest, featured Jammu resident Kuldeep Sharma and was captioned “The Man with a Golden Heart”. The post discussed Sharma’s donation of land to a journalist whose house had been demolished, reflecting Shangloo’s open presence until the eve of his arrest.
This raised questions about the thoroughness of the agency’s efforts, given that a reward had been announced for a man who was easily traceable on public platforms.
The 1989 kidnapping of Dr Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, remains a watershed moment in the history of militancy in Kashmir. Her release in exchange for five jailed JKLF members is widely considered to have emboldened militant groups and marked a turning point in the region’s insurgency.
The case remains under trial before the TADA court. Charges were framed against Yasin Malik and nine others in 2021, and Rubaiya Sayeed identified Malik as one of her abductors during testimony in 2022. Malik is currently serving a life sentence in a separate terror-funding case.
Shangloo was one of twelve accused, in addition to the ten already charge-sheeted, who had been classified as absconders. His brief arrest followed by swift release is seen as a setback for the CBI as it seeks to conclude the decades-old trial.
