Man gets 24 weeks' jail for taking upskirt videos with his watch
Armed with a watch that had a pinhole camera and digital video recording function, a 34-year-old delivery driver took 61 upskirt videos in what District Judge Adam Nakhoda described as a "perverse crime spree" involving multiple victims.
Yesterday, Hew See Xiang, a Malaysian national who is married to a finance executive, was given 24 weeks' jail on 19 counts of insulting a woman's modesty, each involving different women. Another 39 similar charges were taken into consideration. He began serving his sentence on the same day.
Hew's case is the latest in a slew of upskirt offences. In delivering his sentence, the district judge said that the heavy jail term was necessary.
"There is an uptick in offences of this nature and, as such, a strong message has to be sent," he said.
Hew had purchased the watch online for $30 in December 2016 and began using it to take upskirt videos of women in shopping districts around February last year.
On March 11, 2017, Hew secretly filmed 13 women, 12 of whom were in ION Orchard. On the same day at around 6pm, he was at Shaw House in Orchard Road when he saw a woman and her boyfriend going up an escalator. He switched on the recording function of his watch and followed the woman, trailing her from the first to the fifth floor.
The woman's boyfriend saw Hew standing closely while meddling with his watch and suspected that Hew had taken upskirt videos of his girlfriend. He reported the incident to the police.
The watch was then seized and 61 upskirt videos of multiple women were recovered from it.
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