Yasin Malik, 9 others to be charged in Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case

A TADA court on Monday ordered that charges be framed against terrorist-turned-separatist leader Yasin Malik and nine others for their alleged roles in the abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the then Union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in December 1989.

Special Judge TADA Court Sunit Gupta ordered that charges be framed against Yasin Malik, Ali Mohamad Mir, Mohammad Zaman Mir, Iqbal Ahmad Gandroo , Javed Ahmad Mir , Mohammad Rafiq Pahloo alias Nana Ji alias Saleem , Manzoor Ahmed Sofi, Wajahat Bashir , Mehraj-ud-Din Sheikh and Showkat Ahmad Bakshi.

Rubaiya Sayeed who is the younger sister of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, was kidnapped by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front from Nowgam in Kashmir on December 8, 1989.

According to the CBI, the accused had kidnapped Rubaiya Sayeed to force the government to release five militants.

Yasin Malik has been accused of playing a key role in the kidnapping that he and his associates executed.

Rubaiya Sayeed was eventually released December 13 that year.

The court after hearing public prosecutor of the CBI Vijay Kumar Dogra and advocate MA Goni besides going into confessional statements of other accused observed that sufficient grounds existed to presume that all the accused had committed offences.

“Hence, charges are required to be framed against each of the accused persons, separately,” the court stated.

In March last year, a TADA court had also framed charges against Yasin Malik and six others allegedly involved in the killing of four unarmed Indian Air Force (IAF) officials in 1990 in Kashmir. Malik is currently in Delhi's Tihar jail.