UP hostel spycam horror exposes world of digital sex crime, blackmail as police twiddle thumbs

On June 1, Asha (name changed) was out looking for a hostel in Uttar Pradesh’s Allahabad district. As a matter of chance someone referred Asha to a private hostel in a prime location of the city being run from within a huge residential quarter.

At the hostel’s reception, Asha asked for the rent. Sensing it would fall within her budget, the young woman asked for a tour of the place to check the facilities. After seeing the small pigeon-hole like rooms with vertically arranged beds, Asha headed to see the shared bathroom to ascertain whether the water supply was okay. Asha found that while water was running down the tap, the odd-looking showers were dry. Thinking that something must be stuck, Asha shook the showers. What fell to the ground with a squeaky thud was a small spy camera.

Losing no time, Asha raised an alarm following which other girls headed to the bathroom. Shocked at what they saw, the girls informed their parents. Asha too informed her kin, one of whom lodged an FIR at the local police station on June 2.

Acting swiftly, the police arrested the hostel’s owner Ashish Khare, a diploma holder in computer science and son of one well-known doctor in the city. But such was his clout that within two hours of the arrest, Khare was out as the police booked him only under bailable charges.

The matter, however, was flashed in all local newspapers sending shockwaves through the small town and its neighbouring suburbs. Unperturbed by the arrest or the media reports naming him, Khare allegedly started sending threat messages to the girls whose videos he had made, right after his release.

Girls and young women from many peri-urban households stay in hostels and pursue their studies in Allahabad and so there are hundreds of girls’ and women’s hostels in the city. Most hostels run without even putting up a signboard and are unregistered.

The incident has left parents worried and anxious about the safety and privacy of their daughters. While some are worried that their daughters could be blackmailed, others are anxious their videos could be circulated on the internet and it could hamper their marriage prospects if their hostels too had similar hidden cameras.

Their concerns are not unfounded as this is not the first time such a crime has taken place in Allahabad. Spycams were found in two private women’s hostels in Govindpur and Mundera in the town earlier.

Allahabad, however, is not the only city to have reported such crimes by hostel owners or managers. Such incidents have been reported from across India.

Spying on the spycam

Until the law and law enforcement agencies can get their act together, women in India can take a lesson from Bengaluru’s tech-savvy women staying in PGs who use a smart method to detect hidden spycameras with their smartphones.

There are apps to detect hidden cameras. After installing the apps in their phones, they switch off all the electrical installations or gadgets in their rooms or bathrooms, turn on the front camera in their smart phones and scan the area for any hidden camera or electrical device. If such a device is present there would be a red glow in the phone camera that captures the infrared ray from the device. Following the direction of the red glow, women can reach the device.

Given how easy the technology is more women can easily adapt to it.

Dearth of law

Despite such crimes multiplying, there is no law specifically addressing it and no stringent punishment is in place to act as a deterrent.

The Allahabad incident has given rise to a chorus demanding effective laws and enforcement mechanisms to crackdown on crimes where women’s privacy is being breached and their modesty being outraged by using spycams.

The filming or possession of objectionable footage of women is not just an act of voyeurism, a punishable offence, but seems to be part of an organized racket that seeks to blackmail and sexually exploit women.

“When we were working on the Safe City Project of a civil society organization, we had specifically proposed safety audits of roads where women’s hostels, and shelter-homes, and PGs (paying-guest facilities) are located. This would mean good streetlights, a police post nearby, no paan or liquor shops in the vicinity, and location in a decent locality with eateries. I think the primary concern should be the girls’ safety. So these hostels should not come up without the permission of the local administration, which would first do a safety audit and then grant a license,” prof Sumita Parmar, former director of the Centre for Women’s Studies in University of Allahabad, tells The Federal.

In fact, voyeurism was not a serious cognisable offence under IPC until 2013. Thanks to Justice Verma’s comprehensive report with very detailed recommendations to curb sexual violence against women in the wake of the Nirbhaya episode, voyeurism was included as a cognisable offence under the IPC through amendments to the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act in 2013. The Section 354C of IPC after the amendment reads thus: “Voyeurism and/or capturing the image of a girl or woman going about her private acts, where she thinks no one is watching her, is a crime. This includes a woman, using a toilet, or who is undressed or in her underwear, or engaged in a sexual act.”

The penalty prescribed in the law is imprisonment for not less than one year which however can go up to 3 years at the first offence and a stricter punishment for repeat offence.

Shockingly, June 1 wasn’t the first time Khare was caught. It has now emerged that girls had repeatedly complained on 1090 Mahila Helpline about blackmails from Khare and 25 cases are already pending against him.

Still, he is free to carry on committing crimes against women. “Initially, FIR was filed only on Sections 354C, 354D, 292, and 292A (the last two relating to circulating obscene material) of IPC. As these are bailable sections, Khare got bail immediately and set about destroying the evidence. After we wrote to the district magistrate, SSP, and the Women’s Commission protesting on this, two more stringent sections of the IT Act, Sections 66 and 67A (relating to circulation of obscene material which involve a jail term of 3 and 5 years and a fine of Rs 3 and Rs 5 lakh respectively) were added. I have myself argued on this matter in the Allahabad High Court and it has now taken suo moto cognisance of the case,” Richa Singh, a Samajwadi Party leader and a former president of the Allahabad University Students’ Union, told The Federal.

Under the IPC, there is no exclusive law designed to ensure safety of women in hostels, except in Tamil Nadu and Delhi. Maharashtra and Telangana are currently in the process of enacting laws in this regard.

After an incident of rape of two hostel girls in Tamil Nadu caused widespread public outcry, the state first came up with a 23-point guideline in 2013 to regulate conditions in hostels for girls/women. They were further upgraded in 2014. The then chief minister, late J Jayalalithaa, took personal interest in the matter and passed a law in 2014 called Tamil Nadu Hostels and Homes for Women and Children (Regulation) Act, 2014. Under the act, Tamil Nadu Hostels and Homes for Women and Children (Regulation) Rules were also framed in 2015.

The Act provided for mandatory registration of hostels. Obtaining advance certificates on sanitation, and fire and building safety, was made compulsory, and the law directed that such hostels should also employ security personnel. While the Act made installation of CCTV cameras except in bathrooms and changing rooms mandatory, it did not provide for an institutional mechanism for periodical inspection to check whether spycams were being installed in hostels and did not provide for any special penalty for filming girls violating their privacy.

But not all believe that drafting stringent laws can solve the problem.

“Merely demanding more stringent laws would not solve the problem. We need to educate and equip the girls to lodge complaints and fight it out legally. They can curb this only if they remain strong,” prof Rooprekha Verma, former vice-chancellor of University of Lucknow told The Federal.

Indian policymakers need to go deeper to ascertain the reasons why the percentage of women participating in the labour force has remained low at 18.2 per cent in urban India and gross enrollment ratio for women in higher education being a mere 27.3 per cent in 2019-20. In many cities, especially small towns, catering to adjoining rural areas, there aren’t enough hostels. Where such hostels exist, there is no guarantee of safety.

Sadly, in Allahabad itself, after the June 1 shocker, many parents have made their daughters quit education and taken them back to the villages from the hostels. A decade after the Nirbhaya episode, we seem to remain just as apathetic to women’s safety and dignity as ever.