Boston: Prosecutors are determining whether additional charges may be brought against two Rutgers University students, including an Indian-origin teenager, accused of invading the privacy of a fellow student who committed suicide after the two videotaped his sexual encounter with another man and posted it online.
Prosecutors in New Jersey say additional charges, including bias, may be brought against 18-year-old Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, who secretly taped Tyler Clementi's sexual encounter with another man. Clementi committed suicide the next day, jumping off New York's George Washington Bridge. His body was found in the Hudson River. Clementi's wallet and cell phone were found on the bridge, which spans the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York.
In a status update on September 22 on his Facebook page, Clementi had said: "jumping off the gw bridge sorry." "The initial focus of this investigation has been to determine who was responsible for remotely activating the camera in the dormitory room of the student and then transmitting the encounter on the Internet," a news channel quoted Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J Kaplan as saying.
"Now that two individuals have been charged with invasion of privacy, we will be making every effort to assess whether bias played a role in the incident, and, if so, we will bring appropriate charges," Kaplan said.
Under New Jersey law, a person is guilty of bias intimidation if he or she commits a crime with the purpose of intimidating someone because of race, colour, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or ethnicity.
Ravi and Wei are charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy. Two more counts of invasion of privacy were leveled against Ravi for a September 21 attempt to videotape another encounter involving Clementi. Wei surrendered on Monday; Ravi surrendered on Tuesday and was released on $25,000 bail.
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