Aland voter deletion case: Karnataka SIT indicates seizure of entire digital evidence | Bangalore News

“Only if prima facie materials are found, which would warrant the active involvement of the petitioners, the discretionary relief of anticipatory bail can be granted,” the special court stated in an October 31 order granting anticipatory bail to them.

“Even otherwise, the question of tampering with the documents does not arise since, as per the prosecution case, the entire material is available on a digital platform which has been recovered by the Investigating Agency,” the special court noted in its order Friday.

“That apart, if the applications were allegedly filed through digital platforms and if the submission of the prosecution that they are analysing the digital records is to be accepted, it indicates that the petitioners cannot be made to undergo incarceration till the completion of the investigation,” the special court noted.

The special court was provided with the case diary by the SIT in the Aland illegal vote deletion case last week, at the court’s direction. The court sought the case diary to understand the cause of the delay in the investigation of the case, which was registered in February 2023.

“In order to justify their contention, the learned PP has furnished the CD files and also the digital investigation which is being carried out is provided. On taking a cursory look into the materials which are placed before the court, nowhere it is indicated that the petitioners were directly involved in the above case,” the court noted in its anticipatory bail order.

The SIT recovered multiple laptops which were used by operatives at a data centre in Kalaburagi city after being allegedly contracted to delete names of genuine voters in the Aland constituency at the rate of Rs 80 per deletion – during a voter list revision exercise conducted between December 2022 and February 2023 ahead of the May 2023 polls.

The SIT recovered the laptop which was used specifically to place illegal voter deletion requests with the Election Commission of India, according to police sources.

The SIT conducted searches in the third week of October on properties belonging to Subhash Guttedar, the BJP candidate from Aland in the 2023 polls, and his associates, close on the heels of searches and seizures of laptops from properties linked to the data centre operators who were allegedly involved directly in the illegal deletion request scam.

Aland voter deletion case timeline

In February 2023, Congress workers in the area raised concerns and requested verification of the deletion requests after discovering several illegal requests aimed at removing people who resided in Aland from the voter list.

A ground-level verification by election officials, at the instance of the election commission and the district commissioner, of the names sought to be deleted revealed that 6,018 names were sought to be deleted through remote applications across the 254 Aland election booths, and out of 6,018 voters, only 24 were found to be living outside, and 5,994 were still residents.

An assistant commissioner for Kalaburagi and the ECI returning officer for Aland filed a police complaint at the Aland police station on February 21, 2023, against unknown people under Indian Penal Code sections for impersonation, providing false information, and forgery.

According to the FIR, unknown persons “used multiple mobile phones to place online applications for deletion of names of voters without the consent or knowledge of the voters”. Visits to the homes of several persons whose names were sought to be deleted revealed that the applications were filed without the knowledge of the voters, states the FIR.

The SIT of the Karnataka CID, constituted on September 26 due to the slow progress of the probe since 2023, conducted searches in the third week of October on properties linked to Subhash Guttedar, the losing BJP candidate from Aland in the 2023 Karnataka assembly poll, his sons Harsha, a local politician, and Santhosh Guttedar, a liquor businessman, and others.

The searches on the former MLA’s properties followed findings of the SIT of the use of a data centre operated by a Kalaburagi resident, Mohammed Ashfaq, and an associate, Md Akram, for the illegal voter deletion exercise, under a deal where Rs 80 was paid per deletion.

The four-time MLA of Aland, Subhash Guttedar, who contested the 2018 and 2023 Assembly polls on a BJP ticket, denied any links to the illegal voter deletion following SIT raids.

“There is nothing related to the allegations of vote theft; we have not done anything like that. We have no connection, but based on BR Patil’s (winning Congress candidate) allegations, this is happening,” Guttedar said recently.

In a September 18 press conference, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had accused the ECI of failing to provide crucial information on the illegal deletion of 6,018 votes in Aland.

B R Pati won the 2023 Aland poll by a margin of 10,348 votes against Guttedar, who had won the seat in 2018 by a narrow margin of 697 votes.