SINGAPORE - Over nine months last year, a student took videos of women changing in Cotton On outlets islandwide.

Loh Wei Quan, 22, was jailed for 32 weeks on Friday after admitting to 16 of 50 charges. Apart from one of possessing obscene films, the rest of the charges were for insulting modesty.

Loh had secretly filmed women in the changing rooms at the retail chain since February last year until Nov 15, when he was caught at Bedok Mall.

A female customer there had noticed him filming in the fitting room and informed a staff member, who in turn told the supervisor.

The supervisor detained Loh as he was leaving and asked for his iPhone.

A 14-year-old girl was shocked and started crying after she was shown the cellphone which captured her private parts. The video clip lasted five minutes.

The court heard that he was in one of the fitting rooms at Cotton On at the mall when he placed his iPhone through the gap of the fitting room partition and the floor. He had also removed his shoe, and propped up the cellphone against his shoes to achieve the optimal angle for recording the women in the adjacent fitting room.

Before filming the teen, Loh had recorded videos of four unknown women at the same place between 3.37pm and 4.52pm, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Jason Chua.

The DPP said Loh had watched videos of women being secretly filmed while changing in fitting rooms on Tumblr, a microblogging platform and social networking website, before trying it out himself.

He was curious of what went on in the fitting room, and felt a thrill filming women changing without being caught.

Mr Chua said Loh thus visited Cotton On branches around Singapore to film people changing in the fitting rooms.

He would delete the video clip if the person caught on video was male.

Loh told police that each time he recorded the video clips, he would feel excited and "a sense of accomplishment".

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