BENGALURU: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the alleged Aland voter theft case has started the interrogation of the 27-year-old man Bapi Adya, who was arrested from a village in Nadia district of West Bengal on November 12.
Adya was brought to Bengaluru on transit remand and produced before the First Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) court in Bengaluru on Thursday.
The court remanded him in 12-day police custody. Besides his custodial interrogation, the SIT will also examine his digital devices and send them for forensic examination, said sources on condition of anonymity.
“Adya reportedly provided phone numbers and one-time passwords (OTPs) to the Kalaburagi-based makeshift call centre set up by the four alleged suspects -- Akram, Ashfaque, Nadeem and Mushtaq -- for filing online fraudulent 6,018 Form 7 applications on the Election Commission (EC) website for deletion of names of some genuine voters of Aland constituency in 2023. The SIT zeroed in on Adya based on the banking transactions of Akram, Ashfaque, Nadeem and Mushtaq.
Ashfaque, who had left for Dubai after being questioned in the same case in 2023 by the Kalaburagi police, has returned and co-operated with the SIT investigation. He is said to have told the SIT about two portals which provided them with the OTPs for a certain commission per OTP,” added the sources.
‘75 mobile numbers used’
“Of the four men, one is an online political surveyor/manipulator, one is a data operator and two others are well versed in filing online applications and providing logical support,” added the sources.
The SIT investigation has unravelled that the perpetrators had allegedly used 75 mobile phone numbers of people from vulnerable sections of society from across the country to create login IDs for the 6,018 applications. The investigation is looking at loopholes which were used to create login IDs with single one-time passwords (OTPs.) Each login was created using an OTP.
The FIR in the alleged voter theft case was registered based on the complaint by the ECI for impersonation, providing false information and forgery.
