Gwalior/Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Two days after arresting two persons including an Assistant Electoral Roll Officer (AERO) from Shaharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on charge of allegedly creating hundres of ‘Fake’ voter IDs by hacking into the Election Commission of India (ECI) website, Uttar Pradesh Police with help of Madhya Pradesh police have detailed four youths from Morena district of Madhya Pradesh, sources said on Saturday.
Though, kingpin of one of the Madhya Pradesh Modules of the gang is yet to be arrested, one of the detained youths identified as Ajay Kushwah has revealed that the gang has data of over 2 crores citizens of the country, police sources said.
According to sources, Hariom Sakhwar, a resident of Morena district, was leading the gang in northern Madhya Pradesh. The police have raided over a dozen of his possible hideouts but he is yet to be arrested.
The name of Sakhwar and his gang members came to fore after Uttar Pradesh police arrested the kingpin of the gang identified as Vipul Saini from Maccharhedi village in Shaharanpur. Saini revealed the name of AERO, who was reportedly helping him to create voter IDs.
Sources said that Sakhwar is a high-school dropout and is running a cyber café in Morena district. He came into contact with Saini, who is a computer science graduate and has created voter IDs illegally.
One of Uttar Pradesh Police teams has also been camping in Harda district of Madhya Pradesh, as Saini has also revealed the name of a youth Aarman Malik.
Intelligence sources said that Director General of Police (DGP), Vivek Jauhari himself is monitoring the operation and has instructed the superintendent of police (SP) of all concerned districts to coordinate with Uttar Pradesh police to burst the gang. Jauhari, however, could not be contacted by the Free Press for comments.
Sources said that Saini had created over 10,000 voter IDs on the behest of one of Harda district based youth in the past three months.
Sources further added that Sakhwar and Harda based youth used to send details of persons to Saini to create ‘fake’ voter IDs and used to pay Rs 100 to Rs 200 for each voter ID.
However, ECI, in a statement to a news agency, said that its database is ‘absolutely safe and secure. The ECI further clarified that AERO had illegally shared his ID and password to a private person.