Pune peepshow: The 'Sliver' lining

PUNE: Did Hollywood''s Sharon Stone thriller Sliver inspire the 55-year old Pune landlord, who allegedly installed spy cameras in rooms rented out to young college girls.
The unfolding "Webcam Kulkarni" scam in Pune has striking resemblance to the storyline in the Hollywood blockbuster. Sliver, starring Sharon Stone, William Baldwin and Tom Berenger depicted a technology-driven hi-tech landlord, who had installed spy cameras in a number of apartments rented out to tenants.These cameras were linked to a secret control room where he could ‘peep'' into any apartment and invade into his tenent''s privacy.
Similar to Sliver''s peeping tom, Pune''s Mohan Kulkarni had allegedly installed spy cameras in rooms occupied by his tenants (young college girls), wired them to a video-switcher and watched the images on his television placed in the bedroom. Like the character in Sliver, Kulkarni, too, was single, having been divorced by his wife in 1985.
The Pune police who unearthed the scam after probing an innocuous complaint from some of Kulkarni''s tenants are now investigating whether the divorced landlord had recorded these images, transferred them onto CDs or transmitted them over the Internet. A lot many fresh details about the scam are expected to surface in the next few days. He has been remanded to three day''s police custody.