New York, Nov 1 (IANS) An Indian-origin student and his mate who have been accused of filming their classmate’s gay sex act in Rutgers University told a US court that they watched the video only for a few seconds and did not share it with others.
Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both aged 18, allegedly used a web cam to spy on Tyler Clementi with another man in a room Clementi and Ravi shared Sep 19. Clementi jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge three days later.
According to New York Post, lawyers of both the accused said the secretly-obtained gay-sex footage of Clementi was never transmitted past their computer. Clementi killed himself after being ‘outed’.
‘Nothing was transmitted beyond that one computer and what was seen was only viewed for a matter of seconds,’ Ravi’s lawyer, Steve Altman, told the Newark Star-Ledger.
Wei later told friends that she only saw Clementi and the man hugging and kissing. She also described the man in Clementi’s room as ‘kind of sketchy’ looking.
Ravi and Wei, who withdrew from the university in the wake of the scandal, have been charged with illegally filming the sexual encounter and posting the images on internet.
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.
