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The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka CID has made the first arrest in its probe into the large-scale filing of forged voter deletion applications in the Aland Assembly constituency ahead of the 2023 state elections. The arrested man, 27-year-old Bapi Adya from West Bengal, was picked up on November 12 from the Ghuguragachhi-Hanskhali region of Nadia district. He was produced before a Bengaluru court on Thursday, November 13 and remanded in police custody for 12 days.
Aland in Kalaburagi district was one of the constituencies highlighted by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi when he alleged electoral fraud and “vote chori”. The SIT traced payments made by a Kalaburagi-based data centre for unauthorised access to Election Commission of India (ECI) portals, leading investigators to Adya.
According to Indian Express, the SIT’s remand application said that money transferred by the data centre through a website called OTPbazaar for “OTP bypass” services was routed to an IndusInd Bank account belonging to Adya via a BharatPe gateway. Rs 700 was paid to him for every OTP bypass used to access ECI services with fake identities and phone numbers.
Technical analysis of mobile data linked to Adya placed him in Nadia district, after which a team was sent to locate him, the report said. The SIT seized two laptops and a mobile phone from him.
It added that Adya ran two portals that provided mobile numbers and OTPs for Rs 10 per credential to clients conducting online transactions. These portals are suspected to be linked to similar platforms in the United States, with servers possibly located abroad. The OTPs from the ECI were allegedly delivered almost instantly to the operators in Kalaburagi, while the actual owners of the 75 mobile numbers, spread across 17 states, were unaware their numbers had been misused.
The police found that 5,994 of the 6,018 Form 7 applications submitted in Aland in 2022–23 were forged. These applications, filed in the names of local voters, were used to seek the deletion of other voters from the rolls without the knowledge of either party. The forged applications were routed through 72 accounts created on the ECI’s Voter Helpline App, National Voters’ Services Portal and Garuda app. While the ECI provided details of these accounts to the SIT, further requests for specific technical data are still pending.
How the private firm that submitted the forged Form 7s obtained the 72 mobile numbers and accessed OTPs without the knowledge of the number holders remains central to the investigation. One of the key persons running the Kalaburagi-based firm, who had been in Dubai and returned recently, helped investigators identify two portals that supplied the phone numbers and OTPs used to create the untraceable ECI accounts. After paying to register on these portals, clients could select a service, such as WhatsApp or Telegram, and request a credential. The portal would generate a number, which could then be fed into the chosen service to receive an OTP.
Over 3,000 fake numbers were used in the voter deletion applications filed for Aland, and that the portals used by the accused could enable significant cybercrimes because they allow OTPs to be intercepted without SIM owners’ consent. These systems reportedly work only for platforms requiring single-factor authentication; at the time of the Aland fraud, ECI portals used only OTP-based authentication. Following Rahul Gandhi’s allegations, the ECI introduced Aadhaar-enabled OTP verification to access its online services for voter additions, deletions and changes.
The SIT has so far questioned six individuals linked to the private firm in Kalaburagi and searched the premises of former BJP MLA Subhash Guttedar and his sons, who have secured anticipatory bail.