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SINGAPORE: A man was jailed for six weeks on Wednesday (March 10) for recording video under the skirts of a woman in a Singapore General Hospital (SGH) classroom while pursuing a master’s degree in health administration.
His crimes were discovered by an officer from the Public Transportation Security Command (TransCom), who saw him watching one of the upskirt videos on his phone on the train.
Royston Kesavan, 40, pleaded guilty to one count of insulting a woman’s modesty by taking seven videos of her up her skirts in September 2019.
The court heard that Kesavan met with her classmates for a group discussion in an Academy room @ SGH on September 26, 2019. She sat in front of the victim and decided to film her skirt midway through the discussion.
He tipped his phone and tried a couple of times to no avail before capturing various clips of his underwear and groin region, spending half an hour taking the clips and reviewing them.
After being “satisfied with the final video,” Kesavan stopped filming the victim. Took a train home later that night to Pasir Ris MRT and started watching the upskirt videos.
Special Police Sergeant Krishna Vickesh Ganesan was on patrol for TransCom when he saw Kesavan watching the upskirt video.
He approached Kesavan and asked him to get out of the train car. They got off at City Hall, where Kesavan was reluctant to hand over his phone. At first he gave a spare phone to Sergeant Krishna, but eventually he gave him the phone he used to take the clips.
After finding seven upskirt videos in the deleted folder, Sergeant Krishna managed to get Kesavan to admit that he had taken the videos of his classmate before calling the police.
Kesavan was arrested and a search of his home and seized devices did not turn up any other upskirt videos.
The prosecution sought eight weeks in jail, pointing to Kesavan’s persistence and breach of trust as the victim’s classmate.
The defense tried to ask for parole, saying that Kesavan, who is married, had a good record and was sorry.
In response, District Judge Adam Nakhoda said he needed to justify the request for parole, and said stress is not a reason the courts will accept the commission of such a crime.
He said the persistence in this case was “quite extreme” as Kesavan had changed angles and took longer and longer videos of the victim.
For insulting a woman’s modesty, he could have been jailed for up to a year, fined, or both.
