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2d ago

Karnataka SIT Files Chargesheet in Aland ‘Vote Chori’ Case, Names Ex-BJP MLA and Son

Investigators cite EC IP logs plus a money trail to allege nearly 6,000 forged voter deletions.

Close-up image of a person's hand receiving an indelible ink mark on their finger at a voting booth. A pair of hands, with a light-tan complexion and wearing a white cuff, holds the thumb and index finger of a voter's hand, which is stretched across a checkered red, black, and white table. The voter's hand has a wedding band on the ring finger and is being marked with purple/indelible ink on the fingertip, a common practice to indicate that a person has voted. In the background, on the right side, another person is writing on a sheet of paper. Several items are scattered across the table, including a clear plastic bottle with "AQUA" written on a blue label, a ruler, pens, and a smaller bottle of blue liquid, possibly sanitizer. The setting appears to be an indoor polling station.
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Overview

  • Seven people are charged, including former MLA Subhash Guttedar, his son Harshananda, aide Tipperudra, Kalaburagi operators Akram and Mukaram Pasha and Mohammed Ashfaq, and OTP provider Bapi Adya.
  • The filing runs to nearly 22,000 pages with about 15,000 pages of Election Commission data on IP addresses used to place deletion requests.
  • The SIT alleges fake NVSP accounts and an OTP-bypass service, OTPbazaar linked to SMSAlert, were used to submit 5,994 Form 7 deletions between December 12, 2022 and February 16, 2023.
  • Payment records cited include roughly ₹80 per deletion to local operators and about ₹10 per OTP bypass to Adya, who was arrested and later released on bail.
  • The Guttedars have anticipatory bail, a magistrate accepted the chargesheet after a brief jurisdiction query, and investigators indicate additional charges may follow as more EC data are obtained.