Were EVMs Hacked At The 2014 Elections If Hacker Syed Shuja Said Right?

On January 21, the Indian Journalists’ Association (Europe) organized a press conference in London. At this event, a cybersecurity expert called Syed Shuja made a Skype video conference call to take part in the conference and made all the participants shocked with the revelation on the hack of EVMs.

Syed Shuja comes from Hyderabad and now lives in the US. According to what he said at the event, he was a member of the design team who created EVMs or electronic voting machines, a device used to vote for the elections in India.

The shocking news was still ahead. The results of the 2014 elections were hacked to favor one party.

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Syed Shuja was supposed to work for Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, or ECIL for short, which was the manufacturer of EVMs in India during the period of 2009-2014.

After the elections took place in 2014, the body requested the design team to reveal whether the EVMs could be hackable or not.

The answer seemed to be “yes”. And they made an effort to leverage the information for their own benefit. However, when they met each other in Hyderabad, all of his team were shot dead in a pre-arranged violence incident in public, except for Shuja.

A few days before the press conference was held, he got another attack. That’s why he couldn’t go to the event in person and looked for the support from Skype. The invitation to the conference was also sent to the Election Commission and political parties in India, but the Commission didn’t come.

As such, Shuja didn’t manage to show the convincing proof at the conference; however, he added that it has been kept at the safe place in the US and will be soon sent to journalists.

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Up to now, the authenticity of what he revealed has not been checked, including his real identity and his work history at ECIL. Maybe we have to wait for more time to know all of the truth.