Woman finds hidden cameras in house, landlord’s son held

New Delhi: A 30-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly installing spy cameras in the bedroom and washroom of his female tenant’s home in east Delhi’s Shakarpur area, police said Tuesday.

The victim, a civil service aspirant, was staying alone in the house for the past few months and would handover the keys to her landlord’s son Karan before going out of town, they said. The matter came to fore after the woman noticed some unusual activity on her WhatsApp, Deputy Commissioner of Police (east) Apoorva Gupta said “After being advised to check her linked devices, she discovered that her WhatsApp account was logged into an unknown laptop and she promptly logged out of it,” she said. The woman became more suspicious and began searching her apartment for hidden cameras or surveillance devices and she found one in the bulb holder of her bathroom, the officer said. Following this, she made a PCR on Monday. A police team conducted a thorough search and found another camera installed in the bulb holder of her bedroom, Gupta said.

The woman told police that wherever she went out of town, she gave her house keys to Karan, who lives on a different floor of the same building, she said. During interrogation, Karan admitted that three months ago, when she left for her hometown in Uttar Pradesh, she had handed over her keys to him, the DCP said.

Taking advantage of this, Karan bought three spy cameras commonly available in electronics markets and installed one in her bedroom and the other in her bathroom, she said. Since these cameras could not be operated online and used a memory card to store videos, Karan persistently requested the woman to give the keys of her house under the pretext of repairing electrical fixtures and fans as he wanted to transfer the recorded videos from the memory card to his laptop, she said.

During further investigation, another spy camera was recovered from Karan’s possession, along with two laptops used to store the recorded videos, a police officer said. A case under Section 77 (voyeurism) of the BNS was registered at Shakarpur police station and Karan was arrested, the police said. Karan is a graduate and also preparing for competitive exams for the last seven years. He is differently abled, they said. According to the police, he was never involved in criminal activity before.