An Indian man who secretly filmed a woman while she showered at a staff accommodation property in Dubai will be sent to jail, Khaleej Times reported.
The 21-year-old defendant was handed down a three-month jail sentence by Dubai's Court of First Instance. He is set to be deported from the emirate after he serves his time in prison.
During the court hearing, judges were told the man had "peeped through a small hole in the bathroom wall and filmed the woman with his mobile phone as she took a bath."
Though he initially admitted his crime to authorities, the man later denied the charges held against him in the case, which dates back to October 2017. Nevertheless, he was still found "guilty of breaching a woman's modesty and privacy."
Details of the chilling case
During interrogations, the woman at the center of the incident, a 28-year-old Filipino receptionist, shared chilling details of the case.
"Around midnight, I was in the shower in my accommodation when I suddenly spotted the reflection of a man filming me using a mobile phone. I turned around and saw him standing at the small window of his room," she said.
Shocked and terrified by what she had just seen, the woman screamed for help, calling out to her flatmates. An administrator at the defendant's workplace rushed to the scene on the night of the incident after he got a call from the victim.
In his witness statement, the man said when he arrived at the scene, the victim was distraught.
"We seized the staff's mobile phones, including the defendant's. They all denied filming the woman. But when we told them we would report the incident to the police, the accused eventually admitted he filmed the complainant 'unintentionally' three times and then deleted all the clips without watching them," he explained.
After the case was referred to authorities, the defendant admitted he had "climbed to the small window in his bathroom and used his mobile phone to secretly film the woman. He claimed he deleted the video clips shortly after she spotted him."