Engineer jailed 18 weeks for taking upskirt videos at National Library over 6 years

SINGAPORE — For about six years, the 38-year-old man would sit across women at the National Library in Bugis and take videos up their skirts from under the table.

More than 150 of such videos were found on Pang Chang Wai's external hard disk, laptop and mobile phones when he was finally caught red-handed in March last year.

The engineer, who is married with two children, was sentenced to 18 weeks' jail on Tuesday (Jan 14) after pleading guilty in a district court to 10 counts of insulting a woman’s modesty. 

Another 23 charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

He will begin serving his sentence on Feb 24 as he has to tender his resignation, his lawyer TM Sinnadurai told the court.

Pang struck from 2013 to 2019, taking videos that showed his victims’ inner thighs, crotch area and undergarments.

Aside from a university student he filmed, his other victims remain unidentified. Many of them are believed to have been wearing school uniforms.

The court heard that on March 4 last year, the 23-year-old university student was sitting at the study area of the National Library with her boyfriend. They cannot be identified due to a court order to protect her identity.

The couple sat beside each other, and then Pang sat opposite the woman.

The victim’s boyfriend grew suspicious when he noticed Pang placing his mobile phone under the table, so he asked her to take a photograph under the table using her own mobile phone.

After they discovered what Pang was doing, the woman decided to call the police. Pang was held back by library staff members when he tried to leave the building.

After he was arrested, the authorities discovered 162 upskirt videos stored in his electronic devices.

In mitigation, Mr Sinnadurai said that Pang has a pair of twin sons, one of whom shares Pang’s congenital and incurable kidney disease that leads to cysts developing in their kidneys.

He has also gone for counselling sessions and a psychiatric assessment on his own initiative, the lawyer added.

Pang told a psychiatrist from Raffles Hospital that he had a fetish for female legs, confessing that from as early as 11 years old, he was fascinated and aroused by them, Mr Sinnadurai said.

“He has been taking proactive steps — it is not as if he did not realise his mistake. These are signs of remorse. He wants to change and put things back in his life,” the lawyer added.

Pang could have been jailed up to a year, fined, or both for each charge.