An employee of a drive-in restaurant in Hyderabad was arrested on Wednesday, September 22 after a hidden camera phone with its recording mode switched on was found in the women's washroom. A female customer of the restaurant in Jubilee Hills lodged a complaint with the police after she found the hidden camera in an overhead shelf of the washroom. She handed over the camera phone to Jubilee Hills police station.

The police immediately launched a probe and found that the camera phone belonged to one of the workers at the restaurant. Police arrested the 17-year-old accused, a native of Nalgonda district. He reportedly told police that he kept the phone in the washroom when he went to clean it and forgot it there.

A case under Sections 354C (voyeurism), 509 (insulting the modesty of any woman) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act was booked against him. Police, who reportedly found four hours of recording in the camera phone, took up further investigation.

According to the Times of India, the restaurant is located on Road No 10 of Jubilee Hills. The complainant, who is in her mid-20s, was at the restaurant with her friends when she went into the washroom and noticed a suspicious object near the ventilator, The New Indian Express reported. When she found that it was a phone with the video camera turned on, she informed the staff and called the police. 

In September last year, a railway ticket examiner was caught allegedly recording a woman passenger while she was using the restroom during a train journey, by placing a phone camera near the windowpane of the washroom. He was booked for various offences including voyeurism and stalking. Back in 2018, a 14-year-old boy in Hyderabad was held by the police for allegedly taking photos of women while they were bathing in a hostel next to his house. 

With IANS inputs