SINGAPORE - A 22-year-old Vietnamese student was jailed for three weeks on Monday for taking upskirt videos of women.
Last September, Nguyen Tri Dung had stuck his Samsung Galaxy mobile phone under the skirts of women in busy public areas such as post offices and MRT stations and filmed them.
He was charged with four counts of insulting the modesty of these women, with two charges proceeded on.
Nguyen, who has been studying at a local university for two years, was arrested on Sept 16 last year when he took two videos of a Peruvian woman at a Pasir Panjang post office.
He had been there to post a parcel to his friend in Germany. In the queue, he spotted the victim, 27, found her attractive, and decided to film her.
The victim had been writing the address on a parcel when she felt a piece of plastic brushing against her leg.
She turned and saw the accused holding a phone in his hand. On seizing the phone from him, she discovered two upskirt videos of her on it. She then took his student pass and called the police.
Nguyen's lawyer Amarjit Singh Sidhu said in mitigation that his client was a first-time offender, that he was remorseful, and that this would be his last brush with the law.
He added that Nguyen had an internship with a reputable company and would be starting an exchange programme on a Ministry of Education tuition grant soon, and that a custodial sentence would deprive him of these opportunities.
He called instead for a probation suitability report. But Deputy Public Prosecutor Shen Wanqin pointed out the difficulties of keeping track of foreigners on probation if they did not have some local roots.
For each count of insulting the modesty of a woman, Nguyen could have been jailed up to a year, fined, or both.
