EVM expert Shuja’s allegations of killings in Hyderabad triggers a new row

Hyderabad: The controversy over US-based Indian “cyber expert” Syed Shuja’s claims that the electronic voting machines were vulnerable to hacking has taken a new turn with a senior BJP leader in Hyderabad G Kishan Reddy approaching the state Director General of Police for action against him.

Apart from claiming that the EVMs were hacked, Shuja also alleged that Kishan Reddy was responsible for the killing of 11 people in 2014. In a sharp reaction to the allegations that the killing took place at Kishan’s brother-in-law Kaki Reddy’s guest house in the city outskirts, Kisahn asked, “Congress was in power at the time. Why it did not take any action? When so many people were killed, why no complaint was lodged about the missing persons by their families?” Kishan asked. He demanded that the Telangana government should launch a probe into the allegations.

Shuja, who addressed the media in London through video conference from the US, alleged that he along with 13 people had visited the guest house in the wee hours of May 13, 2014 where Kishan ordered his guards to open fire at them in which 11 people died and he managed to escape and left for the US.

Shuja had claimed that the killing of 11 people was later shown as deaths in communal violence. However, Cyberabad police commissioner VC Sajjannar denied the allegations and said that only three people were killed as a result of communal clashes in Kishan Bagh area of Hyderabad.

Shuja also alleged that the BJP had won the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 by hacking the EVMs.

Terming the allegations against him malicious, Kishan told the media in Hyderabad on Wednesday, “The charges are imaginary and baseless. The whole story is a manufactured lie which is scripted by Congress in Delhi and bound to fail”.

“I even don’t know who Shuja is or who Kaki Reddy is”, he said.

Meanwhile, Electronics Corporation of India, the manufacture of EVMs in Hyderabad denied that Shuja was its employee and worked in EVM designing between 2009 and 2014. “We are looking into his claims”, an official said adding that EVMs can neither be hacked or tampered with.