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A MALAYSIAN teen who used his mobile phone to make a video clip of a woman in a toilet was jailed for two weeks yesterday.
Om Shanmugam Balaraman, 19, then an auxiliary police officer, admitted to insulting the modesty of a 30-year-old woman at a staff toilet at HSBC in Collyer Quay on Dec 24 last year.
A court heard that Shanmugam, who was deployed for duty in the bank, was using the toilet at about 3pm when a staff member walked in. It is understood that the toilet was used mostly by female employees who worked as counter staff but was also made available to male staff.
Shanmugam smiled at her and after she had stepped inside a cubicle, he went to the adjacent one. He held his mobile phone over the partition between the cubicles to make a video recording “for fun”, the court heard.
When the woman knew someone had entered the adjacent cubicle, she looked up, saw a white cellphone and shouted. Shanmugam fled and kept the phone in his left shoe. He denied having any phone when confronted by the woman and other staff. The police arrived and found the phone which had a minute-long video clip of the woman.
Shanmugam told the court he had aged parents in Malaysia, his brother was getting married and he was pursuing a course in mechanical engineering. He could have been jailed for up to one year and/or fined.
An HSBC spokesman told The Straits Times yesterday the toilet was refurbished after the incident “to prevent any possible recurrence” and that there are now dedicated toilets for men and women.
