A video showing a boy ‘caught’ for allegedly “hacking the EVM” in Haryana’s Baroda where bypoll elections were held on 3 November, is being circulated with a false claim that it shows EVM fraud in the recently concluded Bihar Assembly elections.
Additional Superintendent of Police (Gohana) Udai Singh Meena confirmed to The Quint that the video is indeed from Baroda.
CLAIM
The video has been shared with the claim, “In the Bihar election, Sangeetha, who was caught instantly hacking the EVM machine, can cast 8000 votes in 2 minutes,” in Tamil.
The Quint received a query on the claim made in the viral video on its WhatsApp tipline as well.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
At the beginning of the video, the person shooting the video states that a boy has been caught ‘hanging’ the EVM at “Rukhi Gaon.”
A relevant keyword search led us to an article by Amar Ujala stating that during the Baroda bypoll elections, “a young man was giving out the voter slip from the machine and he had connected the machine with the help of mobile WiFi.”
Meanwhile, some people from the village accused him of casting fake votes. However, it was later found upon investigation that the machine was an e-voter slip machine.
Two local reporters from Haryana confirmed to The Quint that the video was indeed from Baroda, however no foul play was found on investigation.
Additional Superintendent of Police (Gohana) Udai Singh Meena confirmed to The Quint that the incident is from Baroda and upon thorough investigation the claim was found to be “untrue.”
“Few miscreants spread the news that the printer being used to print voter slip was being used to hang/hack the EVMs. It was verified by engineers in front of members of political parties and was found that the claim is untrue,” he stated.
Evidently, a video from Haryana’s Baroda has been falsely shared as alleged EVM fraud in the recently concluded Bihar elections.
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