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Chandigarh: Hotel Taj staffer films female guest while bathing, held
Hailing from Jammu, woman raised the alarm on finding the employee in her room minutes before checking out
Police have arrested an employee of Hotel Taj, Sector 17, for secretly filming a female hotel guest while she was taking bath in her room earlier this week.
The accused, Anshul, entered the guest’s room using a master key, said police.
Shocked by his presence while she was bathing, the woman raised the alarm, when he fled from her room.
The woman, who was visiting the city from Jammu, was to checkout from the hotel the same day and was getting ready to leave when the incident took place before noon, said police.
Amid high drama, the woman lodged a complaint with the hotel authorities and informed the police immediately. Responding to the scene, police from the Sector-17 station questioned the employee, who had deleted the woman’s videos in his mobile phone by then.
However, on perusing the CCTV footage available with the hotel, police found the employee entering the woman’s room at the time the incident was claimed to have happened.
A representative of Hotel Taj said they had taken action against the employee and were cooperating with the police. “It is an unfortunate incident. We are assisting the police completely in the investigation,” the representative said.
Police sources said that the employee is in his twenties and had recently joined the hotel.
“On receiving the hotel guest’s complaint, we arrested the employee immediately. He had deleted the video from his mobile phone. Police are investigating the matter from all angles,” said inspector Rajiv Kumar, station house officer (SHO), Sector 17 police station.
A case under Section 354-C (voyeurism) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered at the Sector 17 police station. The accused was eventually released on bail.
Voyeurism: What the law says
Section 354-C of IPC describes voyeurism as any man who watches, or captures the image of a woman engaging in a private act in circumstances where she would usually have the expectation of not being observed either by the perpetrator or by any other person at the behest of the perpetrator, or disseminates such image.
Private act includes an act carried out in a place which would reasonably be expected to provide privacy and where the victim’s genitals, posterior or breasts are exposed or covered only in underwear; or the victim is using a lavatory; or the victim is doing a sexual act that is not of a kind ordinarily done in public.
If the victim consents to the capture of the images or any act, but not to their dissemination to third persons and where such image or act is disseminated, such dissemination shall be considered an offence under this section.
Punishment
If proven, the charge on first conviction entails imprisonment up to three years, with fine. On second or subsequent conviction, imprisonment will range between three and seven years, with fine.
Peeping toms
November 2023: A 22-year-old woman and her 30-year-old male friend were arrested for placing a hidden camera in the common bathroom of her paying guest accommodation in Sector 22, inhabited by four more women. Another paying guest, a 39-year-old woman from Fazilka, had noticed the camera’s light on entering the bathroom without switching on the light
September 2022: A female student of Chandigarh University, along with two men, was arrested for surreptitiously taking explicit videos of hostellers while bathing and forwarding these videos to her male friends, spurring massive protests on the campus.
