Srinagar: A Srinagar-based businessman who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for his alleged involvement in the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case was set free within 24 hours on Tuesday (December 2) by a Terrorist and Disruption Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court.Shafat Ahmad Shangloo was arrested by the Union government agency on Monday from his residence in Srinagar’s Nishat locality for allegedly “conspiring with Yasin Malik and others” in the sensational abduction of former Union home minister and Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Sayeed’s daughter in 1989.Shangloo was produced before the TADA court of third additional district and sessions judge Madan Lal in Jammu on Monday with the CBI seeking his judicial remand, according to his counsel Sohail Dar.However, Dar said that the court found that “there was no evidence” to link Shangloo with the crime that took place on December 8, 1989, following which he was set free.“I am relieved. The court has given me justice. This is the victory of truth,” Shangloo told reporters as he walked out of the TADA court along with his counsel and some family members.Dar told reporters that the CBI, which reopened the investigation of the infamous case in 2021, contended before the TADA court that Shangloo was involved in the abduction conspiracy.“The court went through the chargesheet and concluded that there was no evidence of his involvement in the case. The investigating officer [of the CBI] had already given him the benefit of doubt on the premise that there was no evidence against him. That is the reason he has been set free,” Dar said.After his arrest on Monday, Shangloo was described as an absconder who carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head and his release by the TADA court is widely being seen as a setback for the CBI investigators who are probing the 36-year-old case.In January 1999, a TADA court ordered the release on bail of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) affiliates Showkat Ahmad Bakhshi, Manzoor Ahmad Sofi and Mohamamd Iqbal Gundroo, who were named among the accused in the case, observing that they had been in jail for nine years without trial.The sensational case was reopened in January 2021 when the TADA court directed the CBI, which took over the case in 1990, to frame charges against JKLF chief Malik and nine others.Two among those named by the CBI were already dead while 12, including Shangloo, were described as “absconders”.At the time of the incident, Sayeed, one of the two sisters of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti, was a medical intern at Srinagar’s maternity care Lal Ded hospital. She was returning to her home in the city’s Nowgam locality when she was abducted.Sayeed, who now lives in Tamil Nadu along with her family, was held hostage for six days before being released in exchange for five JKLF militants, including its top commander Hamid Sheikh, Altaf Ahmed Bhat, Noor Mohammadd Kalwal, Javed Ahmed Zarger and Sher Khan.In July 2022, Sayeed identified Malik and three others as her abductors following which the TADA court ordered the agency to file specific charges against the suspects.The agency has booked the suspects under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, 368 of the Ranbir Penal Code (wrongful concealment or confinement of a kidnapped or abducted person) as well as 3 (punishment for terrorist acts) and 4 (harbouring or concealing a terrorist or disruptor) of TADA.Earlier this year, the PDP chief wrote to Union home minister Amit Shah to take a humanitarian view of the cases in which the JKLF chief has been named as accused by the Jammu and Kashmir police and Union government investigation agencies.Malik has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a terror funding case and he is presently incarcerated in New Delhi’s Tihar jail along with other separatist leaders.