The fraud and misappropriation wing of the Central Crime Branch arrested eight men and stopped fake votes being cast in the Legislative Council elections on Sunday. The sleuths raided a house on the 2nd main, 3rd cross of Someshwara Nagar in Siddapura near Jayanagar on Sunday and recovered 138 fake voter IDs from them.
The arrested have been identified as Mohiddin Khan alias Imran (29) of Kalasipalya, N. Saleem Pasha (34) of Someshwara Nagar in Siddapura, M. Shajid Ahmad (32) of Kalasipalya Main Road, I. Sadrulla Khan (28) of Someshwara Nagar, Hemanth Maregowda (28) and Krishnamurthy Krishnappa (26) of Kamakshipalya, Satish Jayram (21) of Sriramapura and K. Mohan (26) of Kaveripura in Kamakshipalya.
The police are searching for the Mohin, kingpin of the racket and also a rowdy. The police suspect that he was producing fake IDs to help some politicians, with whom he has close contacts. The miscreants were planning to distribute the fake voter ID cards before the elections on Sunday. But the police, who got the tip-off, raided the house and arrested them. The police said Mohiddin, Salim and Shajid scanned the original voter ID cards, got pictures of fake voters and then change pictures of original voters.
The miscreants used holograms from the government’s “Bhoomi” project and pasted them on fake IDs to pass them off as original. They had also created a fake seal of a block election officer and stamped them on these IDs. The police recovered 65 fake cards created for Bangalore South, 57 for K.R. Puram, 14 for Uttarahalli and two for Yelahanka constituency. Photographs of fake voters, six laptops, a web camera, scanners, three printers, laminating machine, hologram stickers, cutting machine, voters list of 2011 Council's Graduates Constituency election, nine fake rubber stamps, 13 mobile phones and other documents have been seized from them. The police have taken Mohiddin, Salim and Shajid into custody for further interrogation. A case has been registered in Siddapu.