A 26-year-old Malaysian man has been sentenced to six weeks in jail for secretly filming four men in a toilet at a Sembcorp Marine shipyard in Singapore.
The videos were filmed on separate occasions over the span of a month, leading to charges of violating the men’s privacy.
According to CNA, Jathavaram Ragavan pleaded guilty on Monday (11 May) to one charge of intentionally recording the men performing a private act without their consent.
Two additional charges were considered during sentencing.
The court granted a gag order to protect one of the victims, while the identities of the other three men remain undisclosed.
The offence took place on the morning of 26 Jan when Jathavaram entered a men’s toilet at a block in the Sembcorp Marine Tuas Boulevard Yard.
When he saw one of the victims enter a cubicle, he moved to an adjacent stall, lowered his phone, and positioned the camera to film through the partition wall.
Source: Popular Science, for illustration purposes only.
When the victim noticed a phone sticking out from above the partition wall, he shouted, causing Jathavaram to flee the scene.
The victim later confronted Jathavaram at the block’s canteen and demanded to check his phone.
Upon handing it over, the victim found three other videos of men using the toilet, all filmed on separate occasions in January.
To evade police discovery, Jathavaram deleted the videos from his phone before they could be found, hindering further investigation into the privacy violation.
Jathavaram was arrested on the same day and released on bail the following day.
For his offence, he could have faced a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment, a fine, caning, or a combination of the three.
Also read: Man in Taiwan gets jailed for secretly filming 6 naked men in hot spring bath
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Featured image adapted from Popular Science and MS News.