The Karnataka High Court Tuesday rejected a plea by former BJP MLA Subhash Guttedar, his son Harshanand, and personal secretary Thipperudra seeking to scrap a chargesheet filed against them in the 2023 Aland 'vote theft' case. A bench directed the accused to approach the trial court for discharge from the case, noting they may approach the High Court again if the discharge plea fails. Following the High Court’s ruling, a special court in Bengaluru for cases against elected representatives scheduled September 16 for framing charges. The special court took cognisance of the CID chargesheet in April. While Guttedar and five co-accused were previously granted bail, the seventh accused, Bapi Adya, 27, from West Bengal, appeared on Tuesday after a non-bailable warrant was issued against him for his absence from previous hearings. Adya was fined Rs 500 and granted bail. Advocates representing Guttedar and his associates argued that the non-bailable charge of criminal breach of trust did not apply to them and sought an adjournment, which the court effectively set aside by fixing the date for charge framing. The case was registered in February 2023 following a complaint by an Election Commission of India (ECI) official regarding attempts to illegally delete 5,994 voters from the Aland constituency list ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections. According to the SIT chargesheet, Guttedar, his son, and his aide compiled lists of voters suspected of not voting for the BJP and passed them to a Kalaburagi-based data centre run by Akram Pasha, Aslam Pasha, and Mohammed Ashfaq. The data centre operators were allegedly paid Rs 80 per deletion request. To bypass security on the portal, the operators allegedly relied on Bapi Adya, who ran a platform called OTPbazaar linked to a US-based site, SMSAlert. The system allegedly used OTPs generated across 72 phone numbers belonging to people in 17 states. Adya was arrested in Nadia district, West Bengal, in November 2025 after investigators traced Rs 700 in credits per OTP-bypass transaction to his account. Allegation of destruction of evidence The attempt came to light in February 2023 when local Congress workers allied with candidate B R Patil noticed unauthorised deletion requests for living residents and demanded physical verification. An official door-to-door audit across all 254 polling booths revealed that out of 6,018 remote deletion applications, 5,994 voters were still active residents of Aland. The police also accused Guttedar and his associates of attempting to destroy evidence by burning documents during an October 2025 search at his residence. Guttedar claimed the burnt papers were routine waste cleaned out ahead of the Dasara festival. Following the Aland case, the ECI updated its portal on September 18, 2025, introducing identity-verified OTP authentication to prevent unauthorised modifications. Guttedar, a four-time MLA who won the seat in 2018 by 697 votes, lost the 2023 election to Congress candidate B R Patil by 10,348 votes.
