When dubious devices are watching over women's changing room

One never know if the upscale brand house has installed sinister cameras in their fitting rooms. Perverts find pleasures in seeing the bodies of women customers. When a woman selects a dress and decides to give it a try in the shop’s dressing room, in fact, they show a sort of confidence in the brand’s product, staff, and the environment. This bond was, however, breached and may not be repaired anytime soon, when a male customer in Faisalabad found that the locker room of a brand shop where his sister was going to try a dress had installed a hidden camera. 

This is what Dawn newspaper reported: “Noman Zaffar, a law student, had filed a complaint with the People’s Colony police stating that he had visited the shop located on Chen One Road with his sister. She had gone inside the fitting room and found hidden cameras installed there. When she informed him, Mr Zaffar said, he made a video of the hidden cameras, but the store employees flared up at this and threatened to upload the videos onto social media if he took action against them. He said that two of the employees — Rizwan and Fayyaz — had tried to snatch his mobile phone so that they could delete the video of the hidden cameras he had recorded. He said they told him that the cameras had been installed at the behest of the owner of the outlet. He claimed the employees had also tried to illegally detain him. The police registered a case under relevant sections of the Pakistan Penal Code against four people, including the owner of the outlet, its manager, and the two employees, who were taken into custody. Police did not reveal the names of the outlet’s manager and owner and stressed that investigation into the matter was underway.

“Madina Town SP Ahmed Nawaz Shah said the shop had been sealed and the district government would be approached for directions to seal the outlet. He said they had also seized a mobile phone which had been used to record the videos. The suspects had started recording videos of their customers two to three days ago, he said, adding that during interrogation, the suspects revealed that they had so far made three videos which they had apparently deleted after watching them”.

One such incident of capturing private moments of the dating couples in internet cafes was reported in Rawalpindi back in the early 2000s when the Internet supply was rare and Internet cafes were the only places providing the facility. Two women had committed suicide when these footages were leaked. After the police had launched a crackdown on the cafes and directed them to remove dubious devices and install transparent cabins. Since crackdowns are prompted by some controversies and are to be shelved in weeks, if not days, no permanent solutions could be devised for these hidden sinister gadgets.

It will be a good measure if all try rooms, washrooms and lodging rooms in shopping malls and searched to see if these devices are watching over us or not. aa