Eight months after three Muslim girls were caught recording their Hindu classmate inside the washroom of Netra Jyoti College in Udupi city of Karnataka, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has filed a chargesheet against the trio in the Udupi Principal and JNMF Court.
As per reports, the investigation conducted by the CID proved that Shabanaz, Alfiya and Alimath Ul Safa placed mobile phones in the washroom to videotape their classmate. Later, they deleted the video to destroy the evidence.
The three accused wanted to record their ‘friend’ using the girl’s washroom but ended up recording another girl. When the matter became public, the trio confessed to the crime to the college administration. Later, they wrote an ‘apology letter’ to the victim.
A report by the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) has confirmed that the accused’s handwriting matched that of the handwriting in the apology letter. The chargesheet was filed by CID DySP Anju Mala.
The CID has claimed that there was no involvement of external organisations or any ‘communal angle’ in the crime.
While speaking about the matter to The Indian Express, a CID officer informed, “We collected other forensic evidence from the phone and the girls also confessed to the crime during the investigation. Based on these, we chargesheeted them. The girls claimed to have done it for fun, but it is a punishable offence,” a CID officer said.
Another CID officer told CNN-News18 that the video was supposedly not shared with anyone and the accused deleted them ‘immediately.’ The investigation agency has failed to retrieve the said video.
Shabanaz, Alfiya and Alimath Ul Safa have been chargesheeted under Indian Peanl Code (IPC) Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 204 (secretly destroying electronic record), 509 (intending to insult the modesty of any woman) and Section 66 E of the Information Technology.
They were granted bail by a local court in July last year.
The Udupi bathroom video case
On 21st July 2023, a Karnataka-based organisation, All College Student Power (ACSP), wrote the Superintendent of Police, district Udupi, about this crime at Netra Jyoti College where three female students of the Muslim community secretly made a video of Hindu female students and shared the mobile phone.
As per the letter sent by ACSP, students at Netra Jyoti College learned about it on the 20th of July and protested against it.
The college took up the matter, and three students responsible for recording the videos were suspended effective immediately, pending internal investigation. Though the victim(s) did not wish to file an official complaint in the matter, the college went ahead and informed the police keeping in mind the sensitivity of the matter.
After social media outrage, the police filed an FIR against the 3 Muslim women who were indulging in the criminal activity and the college administration for not only destroying evidence but also for not providing information and documents during the investigation.
The police initially took suo motu cognisance of the matter but later the case was transferred by the Karnataka government to the CID.
