A woman in Bengaluru has accused an employee at the popular eatery Anand Sweets & Savouries of filming her without consent inside the washroom of its Koramangala outlet. The incident allegedly took place on April 25 around 8 PM and has since triggered a storm online after the woman, who goes by the Instagram handle ‘itskrithu’, posted a detailed account of the harrowing encounter.
She wrote that upon entering the washroom, she noticed the wall facing the commode was partially made of fiberglass and wooden slats. “I tapped the fiberglass and decided to crouch down and look through the wooden strips. That’s when I saw a phone placed on the other side,” she said. “I looked at my hand to check if it was a reflection, but I wasn’t holding a phone, only my menstrual cup. When I looked again, I saw the phone move. That’s when I realised I was being recorded.”
Panicked but determined, she called her friend and confronted the staff, demanding to check their phones. When she wasn’t satisfied with their response, she called the police. Before they arrived, the duo reviewed CCTV footage and identified the accused, a technician hired through a third-party agency, who had fled through the back exit. He was taken to the police station by 9:10 PM.
“For the next three hours, the accused kept denying everything,” she said. “Around 1 AM on April 26, after repeated questioning, he admitted it.”
Despite filing an FIR, she said employees and even a senior company official tried to persuade her to drop the complaint. “Mr Ramesha, the regional director, met me and said things like I would get over it in a few weeks. He said he saw me as a daughter but also urged forgiveness. No father would do that.”
She also alleged that Mr Ramesha blocked the exit as she tried to leave the room in tears, asking a female staffer to convince her to let the matter go.
Anand Sweets & Savouries issued a statement saying: “We are deeply disturbed by the incident… The individual responsible was a technician contracted for maintenance… We are fully committed to supporting the affected party and reporting the matter to the relevant authorities.”
In her follow-up post, the woman shared an image of the accused and CCTV footage showing him accessing the stairway near the washroom. She concluded her post with a message: “To every woman out there: you’re not paranoid for checking. You’re not overreacting for speaking up.”
