Former BJP MLA Subhash Guttedar and his son Harshananda Guttedar have been named as prime accused in a charge sheet filed by the Karnataka Police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing electoral fraud in the Aland Assembly constituency ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections in the state.
The BJP was in power in Karnataka at the time of the alleged crime and Mr Guttedar was seeking re-election from Aland.
Five others were also charged in the charge sheet and one person was arrested but the Guttedars secured anticipatory bail.
SIT is waiting for ECI data
On 7 September 2025, The Hindu reported that the investigation into the case hit a snag as the Election Commission of India (ECI) did not share key technical data with investigators. Following this, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi held a press conference in Delhi and the state government formed an SIT to investigate the matter, headed by Additional Director General of Police BK Singh.
Sources in the SIT said this is only the first record sheet and more will follow once the ECI provides the required data. The SIT is likely to approach the court and seek directions to the ECI.
Criminal conspiracy
Mr Guttedar, a four-time MLA from Aland, was contesting against BR Patil of the Congress, then a three-time MLA from the constituency. Mr. Guttedar won the seat in 2018 by a narrow margin of 697 votes.
The Guttedars hired Akram Pasha, who ran a call center-like business in Kalaburagi, to target and delete the names of voters they believed would vote for Mr. Guttedar’s opponent, the prosecution said, marking such voters on voter lists. When the SIT raided several properties associated with the Guttedars, they burnt and destroyed evidence in Aland, the SIT alleged in the charge sheet.
Mr. Pasha was paid ₹80 for each bogus application to delete a voter from the roll without his knowledge, filed by his firm, the record sheet alleges. The extensive 22,000-page indictment contains several technical pieces of evidence, including a money trail between the Guttedars and Mr Pasha’s firm, the sources said.
Operating mode
Mr. Pasha, along with his brother Aslam Pasha and relative Mohammed Ashfaq, created accounts on the National Voters’ Services Portal (NVSP) using fake credentials. They purchased them from a website run by West Bengal-based Bapi Adya, which was paid from the account of Mr. Akram Pasha’s wife.
Mr. Ashfaq used not only the laptop and mobile phone provided by the Pasha brothers for this purpose, but also his mobile phone and internet connection. Those devices have been recovered and are part of the evidence, sources said.
Using these fraudulently created login IDs, the trio made 5,994 fake Form 7 applications between 12 December 2022 and 16 February 2023. These applications were made in the names of other random voters of the Aland Assembly Constituency. Neither the person on whose behalf the request was made nor the persons whose names were to be deleted knew about the event.
He caught and charged
Mr. Patil, a Congress candidate from Aland who eventually won the election and is now representing the constituency in the Assembly for the fourth time, was alerted to the forged Form 7 when a Booth Level Officer (BLO) found a Form 7 submitted to delete her own brother’s name from a list he had no idea about. The man was a follower of Mr. Patil and filed a complaint with the ECI in February 2023.
An on-the-spot verification then revealed that of the 6,018 Form 7s received in Aland, only 24 were genuine, while 5,994 were counterfeit. The Returning Officer lodged a complaint based on which an FIR was registered and later transferred to the SIT.
The seven accused in the case have now been charged with criminal conspiracy, providing false information to a public servant, forgery, impersonation and destruction of evidence under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and identity theft under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
The Guttedars secured anticipatory bail while Mr. Adya was arrested. The rest of the accused were questioned but not arrested.
Published – 12 Dec 2025 20:59 IST
