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After filming another student in the women's restroom at a top medical school in Udupi, Karnataka, three girls were suspended from their studies.
Reports claim that the suspended girls Alimatul Shaifa, Shabanaz, and Aliya installed cameras in the restrooms for the purpose of filming other students taking showers or using the restroom.
When the incident was revealed, other students protested angrily, denouncing the invasion of their privacy and calling for harsh punishment for those responsible. The three students were subsequently suspended by the optometry school.
The accused were suspended for two reasons, the director of the institute claims: first, they took mobile phones to college, which is prohibited; and second, they used them to record a video in the lavatory.
While the incident appears to be a straightforward case of the students being suspended for their behavior, some people on social media have drawn comparisons to the infamous 1992 Ajmer sex scandal, in which hundreds of schoolgirls and college students were gang-raped by men from the minority community and blackmailed with nude photographs.
Activist Rashmi Samant connected the Ajmer and Udupi incidents. She claimed in a series of tweets that "unsuspecting" girls who were subjected to naked photo blackmail were distressed and pressured to commit suicide.
Samant said that such recordings or photographs were distributed to the culprits through neighborhood WhatsApp groups to explain the suspected modus operandi. She claimed that neither the problem nor its seriousness were being expressed.
Another social media user compared the Udupi episode to the Ajmer sex scandal and called it "Ajmer 1992 Part 2."
Another social media user made the same claim under the name "Udupi Files."
WHAT WAS THE AJMER SEX SCANDAL IN 1992?
The Ajmer incident, which surfaced in 1992 and was one of the most horrible sex scandals to shock the nation in the 1990s, involved the systematic gang rape and blackmail of hundreds of girls enrolled in schools and institutions. Several years passed while it was happening, according to sources.
By photographing or videotaping the victim's inopportune moments, the offenders would then use such images as blackmail. The local gangs, who are primarily from the minority population, would then receive these pornographic images or movies and use them to sexually exploit the girls.
The incident started when a man who was allegedly connected to the Ajmer Sharif Dargah befriended a girl and used her as bait for his scheme. That set off a cycle that resulted in the exploitation of hundreds of young ladies attending high school and college.
The horrifying situation came to light in April after a local newspaper allegedly published some pornographic images of the girls and a story suggesting that local gangs were abusing them sexually.
