According to documents released by the Indian Journalists Association (IJA), Europe, which organised his news conference in London on Monday, self-declared EVM hacker Syed Shuja was given asylum in the US in March 2018.
The ‘documents’ show he was granted asylum indefinitely under America’s Section 208 of Immigration and Nationality Act, on March 1, 2018, through a US Immigration Court in Dallas.
His name in the document is Syed Hyder Ahmed and date of birth April is 4, 1983, whereas in another set of documents that IJA produced showed his date of birth as April 4, 1981.
He said he was on the payroll of Win Solutions and was posted at Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). He claimed he worked in different locations, but mostly in Sanatnagar, the head office of ECIL, according to documents he provided to the IJA.
He also alleged that the “killing of 11 of his teammates took place at a guest house in Hyderabad’s suburb, Uppal”. He claimed the guest house belonged to ‘Kaki Reddy’, brother-in-law of former BJP MLA G Kishan Reddy, who was “present” at the time of the “killings”.
Kishan Reddy later took on Twitter and said: “My name allegedly being mentioned in the EVM hacking controversy is malicious. The charges are imaginary and baseless. The whole story is a manufactured lie, which is scripted by Congress in Delhi & bound to fail.”
The ECIL of Hyderabad has denied Syed Shuja’s claims that he worked for the company from 2009 to 2014. He had earlier claimed that he worked with ECIL and was aware that Electronic Voting Machines were manipulated by political parties.
The ECIL in its statement said, “It is certified from the records of ECIL that Syed Shuja has neither been on the rolls of ECIL as a regular employee nor was he, in any way, associated in the design and deployment of EVMs produced between 2009 and 2014 in ECIL.”