SRINAGAR: CBI announced on Monday the arrest of a suspect wanted for 35 years for his alleged role in the 1989 abduction of former home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter Dr Rubaiya Sayeed by the banned JKLF, whose jailed chief Yasin Malik is standing trial in the case.The central agency, which took over the case in 1990, identified the arrested man as “absconder” Shafat Ahmed Shangloo. He had a Rs 10 lakh bounty on his head.”Shangloo conspired with Yasin Malik and others in committing the crime. He will be produced in the TADA court, Jammu, at the stipulated time per law,” CBI said.Rubaiya, who was 23 at the time, identified Yasin as one of her captors during a court hearing on July 15, 2022. Another witness backed her testimony in Feb 2023 when Yasin appeared at that hearing through video-conferencing from Tihar Jail, where he is serving a life sentence in a terror funding case.Rubaiya, the third of Mufti Sayeed’s daughters and sister of PDP president and ex-J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti, was a medical intern when JKLF terrorists abducted her on Dec 8, 1989, from near her home in J&K’s Nowgam. She was returning by bus from Lal Ded Memorial Hospital. The terrorists demanded the release of five of their jailed associates in return for Rubaiya’s release. After six days of negotiations, Union govt freed the terrorists despite then J&K CM Farooq Abdullah being opposed to it. Rubaiya, who now lives in Tamil Nadu, was freed hours later.Mufti Sayeed, India’s first Muslim home minister, was part the VP Singh-led Janata Dal govt.”Even if they had taken my daughter hostage, I would not have released a single terrorist,” Farooq publicly said in 2015.On Sept 19 this year, Mehbooba wrote to home minister Amit Shah, urging him to view separatist Yasin’s case through a humanitarian lens. She said his decision to “renounce violence and embrace political engagement and non-violent dissent” required courage that should not be overlooked.”I write to you not merely as a witness but as someone who has lived through the turbulent times of J&K, bearing its grief, enduring its silences, and holding on to its fragile hopes,” Mehbooba wrote.Just over a week ago, a second “key eyewitness” identified Yasin in a Jammu court as the “main shooter” in the 1990 terrorist attack in which four unarmed IAF personnel waiting for a staff bus in Srinagar were killed and 22 others wounded.The unnamed witness’s testimony came 22 months after a retired IAF colleague of the victims first identified the JKLF chief as the main armed assailant.