The Udupi district police on Wednesday booked three girl students in an incident linked to the alleged filming of a girl in the toilet at a paramedical college. The three female students belong to a minority community. The video sparked outrage and protests within the college premises by students.

The three students and the college management board have been booked under Sections 509 (intending to insult the modesty of a woman), 175 (intentionally omitting to produce a document), 204 (destroys any document or electronic record), and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and Section 66E (captures, publishes or transmits the image of the private area of any person) of the Information Technology Act, reports The Indian Express.

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Additionally, an individual identified as Kalu Singh Chauhan was also booked for uploading a “misleading” video on YouTube claiming it to be footage from the Udupi college incident. The video uploaded by the individual is from a Chennai-based YouTube channel which was edited with a background voice in Kannada to portray it as one related to the Udupi incident, Superintendent of Police (Udupi district) Hakay Akshay Macchindra said.

“This video has no correlation with the incident in Udupi,” he added. As per the FIR, the incident took place on July 18 between 2.30 and 3 PM.

As per the college administration, the three accused accidentally filmed the student as part of a prank while the latter was using the washroom. The video was deleted in the presence of the victim as soon as the incident came to light. The three girls also apologised for the incident.

The college has further claimed that three mobile phones belonging to the accused were seized by its management, adding that the victim did not want to register a complaint in the matter. The three girls were eventually suspended from the college on July 25.

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“We have already taken necessary legal action and have suspended the students. Once we came to know about the incident, we handed over the mobile phones to the police. We are not at fault if the victim did not wish to register a complaint. But still, we have registered a complaint and the cops have taken it as a petition. Our motto is to give the best education and at the same time ensure safety. But such incidents could have happened in any public area. Since the students are our brand ambassadors, we will speak to them and counsel them in the days to come…,” the director of the institution told IE.

The identity of the three accused girls, all from a minority community, has also taken a communal turn with some social media users linking it to “jihad”. Local BJP leaders and right-wing groups have also termed it a ploy to “trap Hindu girls”.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, wrote to the Udupi SP on Tuesday, alleging that the video was circulated among the relatives of the girls. On the other hand, the All College Student Power, a students’ group in Udupi, alleged that the college management had silenced the victim.