In spite of all the heavy-duty security and scrutiny employed by the Election Commission, a 60-year-old furniture dealer got quite a shock on Monday afternoon when he went to his local polling booth to cast his vote -- only to realise that somebody else had already cast it in his name.

"I had gone to RC Mahim School's booth number 50 to vote, but the officials there told me that the vote for number 1186 i.e. me, had already been cast," said Abdul Aziz Memon, a resident of Mahim.