Srinagar- The arrest and subsequent release of businessman Shafat Ahmed Shangloo has taken an unusual turn after a Special Court acknowledged that his name had been“inadvertently or mistakenly” included in a 2019 general arrest warrant in the Rubaiyya Sayeed kidnapping case.

Shangloo was set free on Tuesday after the court found that the warrant issued on August 10, 2019 did not originally include his name in the list of accused against whom action was ordered more than three decades ago.

The warrants were issued in compliance with a Special Court order dated September 17, 1991, which had directed the issuance of warrants against five individuals. Their names were listed as Miss Halima, Javed Iqbal Mir, Mohd Yaqub Pandit, Javed Ah Mir and Gh. Mohd Taploo.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had probed Shangloo for his alleged role as a conspirator in the case but released him for want of evidence. He was placed at number 10 in the column of the chargesheet that listed individuals released due to lack of evidence. The CBI had filed the chargesheet on September 18, 1990 against JKLF chief Yasin Malik and others.

With recording of prosecution evidence scheduled to begin on December 6, authorities renewed their effort to track down absconding accused. It was during this process that Shangloo was arrested from his home in Srinagar's Nishat area on December 1.

Rubaiyya Sayeed, daughter of the then Union home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, was abducted from near Lal Ded Hospital in Srinagar on December 8, 1989. She was freed five days later after the V P Singh government, supported at the Centre by the BJP, released five terrorists of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front in exchange.

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