A black Scorpio car rammed into the boundary wall of a strong room in Satna district in Madhya Pradesh past midnight on Sunday, giving a fresh twist to the recent EVM security row.
Talking about the incident, Kotwali police station in-charge Vidyadhar Pandey said that the vehicle with six occupants rammed into the boundary wall of the strongroom where the EVM was kept. While two persons, identified as Pramod Yadav and Rudra Kushwaha, were immediately arrested while the other four, namely Shailesh Kushwaha, Sanu Kushwaha, Satyavrat Singh and one other, managed to flee from the spot. The vehicle bearing registration number MP 19 CB 0505 was, however, impounded.
As reported by Dainik Bhaskar, the vehicle seized had Congress stickers stuck on it. The youths who were arrested demanded immediate counting of votes. A portion of the wall was damaged due to the collision.
Earlier too, a portion of the boundary wall of the same strong room was found damaged on November 30.
According to the reports, all the accused were intoxicated and during the police interrogation, they confessed that they wanted to check the EVM strongroom. The police have registered a case for trespassing, violating the model code of conduct and other relevant sections were registered against the accused after the report of the returning officer and SDM Satna CS Tripathi.
This incident gave a chance to the Congress, who have been obsessing over the ‘EVM hacked theory’, to immediately encash the situation and launch a protest. Recently a Congress worker died after being exposed to cold in neighbouring Chhattisgarh because he was outdoors all night ‘guarding’ the strong rooms.
This was the second mishap with EVM strong rooms in Madhya Pradesh. On November 30, the CCTV cameras and LED screens at a strong room in Bhopal had stopped working for around an hour due to power failure. After that incident, the EC had arranged for power backups at the strong room.