Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti defended her sister Rubaiya for failing to identify anyone except Yasin Malik in the 1989 kidnapping case.
She said that 32 years is a long time and people tend to forget a lot of things.
While speaking to media, Mufti said, “Rubaiya Sayeed was called as a witness to identify someone. She had to go. Yasin Malik had been in public domain and was easy to identify him.”
“32 years is long time, people forget a lot of things. She could not identify anyone else. She did her duty,” she added.
Rubaiya Sayeed, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter, appeared before a special CBI court on Friday in a case related to her 1989 abduction and identified JKLF chief Yasin Malik and three others as the ones who took her captive.
This was the first time Rubaiya was asked to appear in the case. She had been freed after five terrorists were released in exchange. Rubaiya, who stays in Tamil Nadu, is listed as a prosecution witness by the CBI, which took over investigations into the case in early 1990.
Rubaiya identified Malik, who was present in the court through video conferencing. She later identified him again through the pictures that were exhibited in the court.
The case had gone into virtual cold storage and was revived after Malik was picked up by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2019 on charges of terror funding.
