A special court in Jammu has issued bailable warrant against the former Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter, Rubaiya Sayeed, to ensure her attendance on the next date of hearing in the case of her kidnapping in Srinagar in December 1989.

Rubaiya was held in wrongful confinement for 5 days and released on 13 December 1989 only after the VP Singh government, then at the Centre,  released 5 militants belonging to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).  The release was a cause celebre fuelling  the valley’s separatist movement.

On 15 July this year, Rubaiya had appeared in the hearing on the court’s summons and identified the jailed JKLF chairman Yasin Malik and three others of the nine accused as her kidnappers 33 years ago. It was for the first time that the 56-year-old Rubaiya, who was a 23-year-old medical intern in 1989, appeared before the TADA court in Jammu which also stands designated as a special court for the CBI cases. She was supposed to appear again, on the next date of hearing on 23 August, for her cross-examination which the prime accused Malik insisted to conduct himself.

While on Tuesday Malik appeared from Delhi’s Tihar Jail through video conferencing, all the other accused were physically present. Upon noticing the key witness Rubaiya’s absence, the presiding officer issued a bailable warrant to ensure her attendance on the next date of hearing, on 21 September. After pleading guilty to the charges of his involvement in a case of terror funding and subversive activity framed against him in the NIA court in New Delhi, Malik was convicted and sentenced to multiple life and other term imprisonments earlier this year.

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According to the CBI’s special public prosecutor Monika Kohli, the court issued a bailable warrant, seeking Rubaiya’s personal attendance on 21 September. She said there was no explanation to her absence during the hearing. Malik, she said, repeated his submission, seeking a chance of physical appearance to cross-examine Rubaiya which was not granted.

“He was told that according to an order from the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, the accused would appear only through video conferencing to cross-examine the witnesses. He was offered legal counsel which he again refused to accept. Thereupon, he was asked to submit in writing that he would not accept or engage any counsel”, Ms Kohli said.

Previously, on 22 July, Malik launched a hunger strike inside the Tihar Jail and maintained it for 10 days, seeking a chance of his physical appearance in Jammu’s court for Rubaiya’s cross-examination. Even as the jail authorities assured him that his demand would be forwarded to the Union Home Ministry in the Government of India, he has not been permitted to appear physically. Malik told the court that he had already received the prosecution witness’s statement dated 15 July. He insisted that he would personally cross-examine Rubaiya in the court in Jammu.

Today’s proceedings made clear enough that Malik would not be brought physically from Delhi’s jail to the Jammu court and that he would have to either engage a professional counsel, of his choice or the one offered to him by the court, or cross-examine the prosecution witnesses through video conferencing from Tihar Jail.

In the very beginning of the separatist militancy, the government had assigned investigation into the two high-profile cases— Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping of 8 December 1989 and the Indian Air Force personnel killing of 25 January 1990— to the CBI. The agency conducted and completed the investigation and filed charge sheets in both cases in the TADA court in 1990. However, the trial in these cases commenced only after the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in an unprecedented car bomb blast on the Srinagar-Jammu highway in February 2019.

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