A 31-year-old man who made a habit of filming women in toilets was jailed for 20 weeks yesterday.

Raymond Tan Yiwen, who faced a total of 51 charges, including several involving criminal trespass, pleaded guilty to seven of them.

In mitigation, Tan, who lost his job a month ago, claimed that he realised his mistake and needed to return to work as he has a seven- month-old child to support.

The court heard that in August last year, Tan went to a company to buy a plastic component. A 25- year-old Malaysian woman attended to him.

Later, when she went to the toilet, she noticed someone in the next cubicle holding a mobile phone through a gap at the bottom. She quickly put on her clothes and left. Five minutes later, she saw Tan coming out from the other cubicle. She ran out and called the police from her office.

She provided the police with Tan's personal details, based on e-mail between him and her firm.

Tan went on to delete the video he took of the woman, but not before saving screenshots.

A month later, he was attending the second day of a course when he entered a toilet for women.

Some time later, he saw someone in one of the cubicles. From outside, he took a video of the woman relieving herself.

In the evening, he saw a woman entering the toilet and followed her. The woman was relieving herself when he positioned his phone at the bottom of the cubicle door.

Last year, he also took an upskirt video of a woman on an escalator at Kovan MRT station.

Tan was arrested last October.

He could have been jailed for up to one year and/or fined for insulting modesty.

The maximum punishment for criminal trespass is three months' jail and a $1,500 fine.

Elena Chong