Particle.news
Download on the App Store
14 ARTICLES
·
6mo ago

Karnataka SIT Files 22,000-Page Chargesheet in Aland ‘Vote Chori’ Case, Names Ex-BJP MLA and Son

Investigators say a targeted, OTP-bypass scheme drove nearly 6,000 forged 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.
Image
Image
Image

Overview

  • The filing before the First Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Bengaluru names seven accused and invokes charges including criminal conspiracy, forgery, impersonation, destruction of evidence and identity theft under the IT Act.
  • The chargesheet alleges Subhash Guttedar provided lists of previous non-supporters to Kalaburagi operators who created fake NVSP logins and submitted 5,994 Form 7 requests between December 12, 2022 and February 16, 2023.
  • Investigators detail a money trail paying roughly ₹80 per attempted deletion to data-centre operators and per-OTP fees to West Bengal’s Bapi Adya, alleged operator of OTPbazaar linked to SMSAlert.
  • Adya was arrested in November and later released on bail, while Guttedar, his son Harshananda and aide Tipperudra have anticipatory bail granted in October.
  • The SIT says further chargesheets are likely once the Election Commission provides technical logs, while the poll body maintains only 24 deletions were ultimately validated after field verification.