Mumbai: A 30-year-old woman filed a police complaint on Saturday evening after she discovered a mobile phone in video recording mode placed over an air vent in a toilet at McDonald's Ghodbunder Road outlet in Thane, reports Mumbai Mirror.
The Thane cops are now looking for an attendant of the restaurant who went missing after the incident. This employee, identified by cops as Sachin Waghmare, 20, had stopped the woman from entering the toilet, asking her to wait a couple of minutes so that he could mop it clean.
The mobile, it was later found, had a clip of the complainant, Shilpa Koparde, a resident of Vijaynagar in Thane, entering the wash room and several other obscene recordings.
A complaint has been lodged under Section 509 IPC (word, gesture or act intended to outrage a woman's modesty) at the Kasarwadvali Police Station and the pervert's mobile and memory card have been seized.
On Saturday, Shilpa arrived at the restaurant at Big Mall with her businessman husband, Yogdeep and five-year-old son Grahiesh at around 4 pm. After they finished their meal, Shilpa excused herself to go to the wash room. Just as she was about to enter the wash room, Waghmare stopped her, saying he would take a few minutes to clean it.
However, to Shilpa's surprise, the loo did not look mopped when she entered. Suspicious, she looked around and found a camera-like object lying on the air vent. Alarmed, she informed her husband, who in turn summoned the restaurant's manager.
The staff immediately identified the mobile as that of Waghmare. However, by then Waghmare, a resident of Sai Nagar slums, was nowhere to be seen.
“It was very suspicious the way he stopped me from entering the loo. My suspicion only grew stronger when I saw the loo was dirty. He, obviously, had spent the time inside doing something else. When I looked around, I saw this camera-like object lying on the air vent,” said Shilpa talking to Mumbai Mirror from the police station.
Her husband, who owns a manufacturing unit in Pune, said he suspects Waghmare has recorded clips of unsuspecting women before. “We are afraid that such clips were recorded and later circulated or posted on the Internet,” he added.
A McDonald's spokesperson said, “We are aware of the incident that occurred at our Big Mall restaurant on September 4. We are cooperating with the customer and have filed a police complaint along with the customer. We have suspended the employee pending the result of the investigation. We are assisting the police with the investigation to bring the culprit to book at the earliest as for us the customer always comes first.”
