Passenger spots spy camera after she notices cabby behaving strangely
WHEN Mary realised her taxi driver was secretly filming her, she snapped.
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| SNEAKING A SHOT: Mary, dressed in the same outfit she wore during the taxi ride, showing how she took photos of the spy camera. TNP PICTURE: HAN YONGMING |
Whipping out her handphone, Mary took pictures of the driver's pen camera and noted his licence plate number.
She then made a police report and handed her pictures to the police. The taxi company has since sacked the driver.
He is also being investigated by the police.
Mary (not her real name) had no idea her cab ride would turn out to be so dramatic. After all, she takes a taxi to work every day.
On Tuesday she boarded the Comfort taxi at 9am at her Tanglin Halt home to go to her office at Kallang Way. Mary, 21, an undergraduate, holds a temporary job as a customer service officer.
Nothing seemed amiss at first, she said. The alleged peeping Tom looked as old as her father.
But a large pen was stuck between the front passenger seat and the armrest; and behind the pen, a pink cloth.
The cabby had asked for the destination in English, and drove on in silence. The only other time they spoke, said Mary, was when she gave him directions and when she paid the cab fare.
Pink cloth
A few minutes into the journey, the cabby started behaving strangely. They had turned into the main road when he started fidgeting with the pink cloth. His left hand was on the pink cloth and his right on the steering wheel.
Mary told The New Paper: 'I got a little suspicious, but I was still quite sleepy at the time, so I didn't make much of it. I thought he was just moving some things around.'
Distracted by the pink cloth, she didn't see the pen then.
Feeling bored, she started to flip through a fashion magazine. She was sitting on the left side of the back seat, right leg crossed over the left. On her right were her handbag and a shopping bag.
After browsing for a few minutes, she put the magazine down on her lap. She was looking around the taxi, she said, when she noticed the pen.
The taxi was at Whitley Road then, near the PIE. She leaned forward to get a closer look at the pen - and realised that it was a pen camera.
She said she recognised what it was because her friends had shown her pictures of it on the Internet.
Similar pen cameras sell for just $50 on eBay Singapore. They can be plugged into your computer like a thumb drive and can record hours of footage.
What made her so sure of what it was, she said, was the small button on top of the pen, and the hole above the clip - the lens of the camera.
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| SPY STUFF: What a pen camera may look like. The lens is above the clip. ST FILE PICTURE |
At last the cabby's fidgeting made sense.
She froze.
Mary said: 'I was stunned at first. I was thinking, 'Was he trying to switch on the pen and angle it at me just now?'
'I adjusted the magazine to 'protect' myself, and didn't dare to move or look straight at him after that. I only looked at him from the side, or through the rear-view mirror.'
But she recovered her wits quickly. Whipping out her handphone, she pretended to be playing games on it, snapping away photos of the pen camera and the taxi driver. She took seven photos.
The cabby, she said, didn't seem to notice that she was taking photos of him.
The taxi was close to her office then. After directing the driver to her office buidling 'calmly', she got out from the left side of the taxi.
She called her boyfriend right away and made a police report online at 10.27am.
'He's a menace to all women,' she said. 'He shouldn't have tried to invade others' privacy.'
She shuddered as she recalled how the pen camera was positioned in the middle of the cab, slightly above seat level.
'I feel sorry for all those women who have been caught on film,' she added.
Her boyfriend, Peter (not his real name), 23, agreed. 'It's ridiculous. It spoils the image of Singaporean taxi drivers.'
Cabby Mr Delit Komar, 56, also condemned the alleged peeping Tom.
'He's a disgrace to all of us taxi drivers,' he said, shaking his head. 'It's just not right.'
ComfortDelgro spokesman Tammy Tan said that the company does not 'condone the driver's actions' and has sacked him.
Police investigation
She added that the company is helping with police investigations and will warn their drivers against such behaviour.
The police said investigations are ongoing.
Lawyer Tan Hee Joek, of Tan See Swan & Co, said that the cabby can be charged for insulting the modesty of women passengers.
'It's the same as a pervert taking upskirt photos of women,' he said. 'If found guilty, he can be jailed for up to a year, or fined, or both.'
Though miffed, Mary is not going to shy away from taking taxis.
'Maybe I should have asked to borrow that pen too,' she said, laughing.
