RICHMOND — A 21-year-old Indo-Canadian man was sentenced to two-years probation on Thursday for filming up an unsuspecting woman’s skirt in the middle of a Richmond town centre store.
Richmond Provincial Court heard that Harshit Garcha shot the video while he walked around Winners, and was spotted by the store’s loss prevention officer approaching the woman before holding the camera under her skirt, reported the Richmond News.
Garcha, now 23, was immediately arrested and confessed that he’d taken the footage in the hope of selling it on the Internet.
The camera Garcha was caught with in June 2010 contained dozens of similar videos shot under women’s skirts.
Garcha was charged with five counts of secretly observing or recording for a sexual purpose, but was only found guilty of one count after a short trial.
Judge Ron Fratkin described the crime as “insidious and alarming.”
Before the trial kicked off, defense counsel Gary Adams argued that no crime had been committed, because the incident took place in a public area, where there’s a certain forfeiture of privacy.
Crown counsel Brian MacFarlane disagreed, saying everyone has a reasonable right to privacy even in a public setting.
“Garcha used a digital camera to record a woman’s private area,” MacFarlane said, adding it didn’t matter if they were out in public or not. But without her permission, that was illegal.
