A man who had been missing from the country’s radar for more than three decades has finally been traced. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday arrested Shafat Ahmad Shangloo in Srinagar, bringing a new twist to one of India’s most emotionally charged kidnapping cases, the 1989 abduction of Dr. Rubaiya Sayeed.
Shangloo, who investigators say vanished soon after the crime, was picked up from the Nishat area, where he had been quietly living under the radar. For the CBI, his arrest is not just the detention of an accused but the closing of a long-open wound in a case that symbolised the turbulence of Kashmir’s late-80s militancy.
According to the agency, Shangloo was among those who allegedly conspired with Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) members, including Yasin Malik, to kidnap Rubaiya — then a young medical intern and daughter of then-Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. For years, the authorities listed him as an “absconder,” even announcing a cash reward for information on his whereabouts. His sudden discovery and arrest, after all this time, has therefore stirred quiet curiosity across the Valley.
The 1989 abduction itself remains etched in India’s collective memory. On a winter evening, Rubaiya was returning home from Lal Ded Hospital when armed men intercepted her minibus and took her away. Her captors demanded the release of five jailed militants, and after intense national pressure and political debate, the government agreed. Rubaiya walked free after five days; the militants walked out of jail soon after. Many analysts still describe that exchange as a turning point that shaped a decade of violent insurgency.
Now, as Shangloo is set to be produced before the designated TADA court in Jammu, investigators hope his testimony and interrogation will fill long-standing gaps. The case, once stuck in political crosscurrents and delayed by years of conflict, has slowly restarted in recent years, particularly after charges were framed against Yasin Malik and others.
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