Indian-origin student charged with filming roomie’s sex act

NEW YORK - An Indian-origin student at a US university has been charged with illegally filming his roommate having sex and posting the images on internet, a media report said Thursday.

Dharun Ravi of Rutgers University, New Jersey, has been charged by the Middlesex county prosecutor’s office with invasion of privacy for allegedly placing a camera inside the victim’s dorm room, New York Post quoted authorities as saying.

The victim, Tyler Clementi of New Jersey, allegedly committed suicide last Wednesday after learning that the images of him with a man had been streamed live on the internet.

Ravi along with another student Molly Wei, both 18, used the camera to view and transmit a live image of the student Sep 19, said Middlesex county prosecutor Bruce Kaplan.

Ravi has been charged with two additional counts of invasion of privacy for allegedly trying to transmit another encounter involving the same student Sep 21, the report said.

Ravi was freed on $25,000 bail and Wei was released on her own recognisance after the suspects surrendered to police.

According to the report, Clementi, 18, had posted a message “jumping off the George Washington Bridge sorry”, on his Facebook page last week, a student who knew him said.

Three days before the suicide, Ravi posted on his Twitter account that Clementi, his roommate, wanted some privacy. “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into Molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay,” he wrote.

Collecting or viewing sexual images without consent is a fourth-degree crime. Transmitting them is a third-degree crime with a maximum prison term of five years.

In a statement, Rutgers University spokeswoman Sandy Lanman said the school “takes these matters seriously and has policies to deal with student behaviour”.