MLAs turn investigators, FabIndia employees held after Smriti Irani spots CCTV camera in trial room

Panaji: Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani may have been ingloriously chucked out of the BJP National Executive, but on Friday, her ‘whistle-blowing’ act about a mischievously placed CCTV camera outside the trial room of a Fabindia store in Goa, attracted more attention than the ongoing BJP national executive meet in Bangalore.

Four employees of the Fabindia store in the upscale beach village of Candolim - Karim Lakhani, Prashant Naik, Raju Panche and Paresh Bhagat - were arrested by the Crime Branch late on Friday, several hours after Irani claimed to have spotted a CCTV camera outside the trial room, with its lens allegedly pointing towards the closed space where she was trying out clothes.

Dressed in a black salwar kameez, Irani, who was accompanied by her husband, first questioned the management and then contacted local Bharatiya Janata Party legislator Michael Lobo, asking him to fetch the police. Irani however left the scene, just as media crews arrived at the site and has not been available for comment since.

With the main complainant in this express case, Irani, out of the picture, it was left to Lobo and to some extent the police, to tell the media about the incident. Lobo claims the case is an open and shut one.

“The lens of the camera was pointing towards a small little ventilator which was part of the trial or waiting room,” Lobo told Firstpost. Interestingly, Lobo, another BJP MLA, Pramod Sawant, and BJP Zilla Panchayat member Shawn Martins, were present on the crime scene even as the panchanama was being carried out at the crime scene by the police.

More so, Lobo was also part of the initial police investigation, even telling the media that he had asked staffers at the Fabindia store to show him the footage stored on the CCTV servers.

“I went inside the store room where the manager and the accountant sit. The person who sees (monitors) CCTV camera. We told him to show us the CCTV footage… The recording which is there of the trial room, we did see people changing clothes inside,” he said, raising questions whether politicians, even if they are elected representatives could access a crime scene and more so handle evidence on their own.

Lobo claims he wanted to see the footage, because Irani had asked him to file a complaint on her behalf. “Before filing any FIR, madam, the HRD minister telephonically told me they are recording, using trial room to change clothes,” he explained, while justifying his access of the CCTV footage. Irani is familiar with Goa’s BJP leadership because she served as the general secretary in-charge of the state until just after the 2012 state assembly elections in the state.

While the incident occurred at around 12:40 pm, the four staffers were arrested late Friday evening, after being detained for several hours. A family member of one of the arrested staffers told Firstpost that the CCTV footage was being monitored by Fabindia’s senior managerial personnel and there was no point in arresting mere sales personnel on duty.

“All the footage is stored and is analysed regularly by senior Fabindia personnel. If there was something wrong in the way the CCTV camera was positioned, they should have corrected it or reprimanded our boys. They are in the wrong too, so why not arrest them too?” a parent of the arrested persons told Firstpost on condition of anonymity.

Police sources also said that all the four arrested persons in their initial statements said that the CCTV camera was positioned in the manner it was, because of several recent shop-lifting incidents, which occurred in the store. They even mentioned a recent instance, when a foreign tourist tried to tuck in an unpurchased article of clothing under her blouse while in the trial room.

Fabindia on the other hand has not shed any new light in their brief statement to the media after the controversy broke on Friday afternoon. “We have security cameras in all stores…The cameras are placed where shop-lifting can occur…They are not inside the trial rooms,” Fabindia managing director William Bissell told NDTV.

A statement on the boutique’s official Facebook page said: “Fabindia is deeply concerned and shocked at this allegation. We are in the process of investigating this internally and will be cooperating fully with the police. Senior officials of the company are on their way to Goa and will be present during the investigation".

The incident has inspired the North Goa district police to conduct an examination of CCTV installations by all commercial establishments in its jurisdiction, especially in the coastal belt, which is popular with tourists. “We have formed a team to start a drive across North Goa,” Superintendent of Police Umesh Gaonkar said.

The controversy also made waves on social media.

“Future women shoppers at Fabindia owe Smriti Irani a debt of gratitude,” wrote Bevinda Collaco, who runs the popular TargetGoa page.