For millions of women, a hospital is a place of vulnerability—of illness, pain and childbirth. But in India a growing number of investigations suggest that these moments are being recorded, stolen and sold. From maternity wards in Gujarat to medical colleges in Andhra Pradesh, illegally obtained hospital footage of women has surfaced in online porn markets, raising urgent questions about consent, surveillance and accountability in the country’s healthcare system.
What makes this phenomenon especially disturbing is how ordinary it has become. CCTV cameras are now standard fixtures in hospitals, installed in the name of suraksha (security), discipline and risk management. Yet these same cameras—often positioned high in corners, silently recording—have become a source of sexualised material when safeguards fail. Investigative reporting shows that footage from labour rooms, gynaecology wards, examination areas and staff changing rooms has been accessed without authorisation, copied, and circulated through encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram. In these digital markets, hospital clips are advertised alongside other voyeuristic material, priced, bundled and delivered with chilling efficiency.
One of the most extensively documented cases comes from Rajkot in Gujarat, where CCTV cameras inside a private maternity hospital were compromised over an extended period. The leaked footage included intimate medical procedures, particularly gynaecological examinations, filmed from fixed angles that left no doubt about their origin. Police later said the system had been left exposed with weak or unchanged credentials, allowing outsiders to enter remotely. Teaser clips were reportedly used to attract buyers, who were then directed to Telegram channels where access to folders containing hundreds or thousands of videos could be purchased using UPI payments. By the time the breach came to light, investigators suggested that tens of thousands of clips from multiple locations were already in circulation. For the women filmed, many of whom may never be identified, the violation remains invisible but enduring.
This was not an isolated cyber intrusion. In Madhubani, Bihar, the threat came from within the walls of a private nursing home. The facility was sealed after a woman employee complained that hidden cameras had been installed in highly sensitive areas, including a labour room and a changing space. Police recovered digital material and formed a special investigation team, treating the case as one of deliberate voyeurism rather than hacking. The distinction matters: it shows that exploitation does not always depend on technical sophistication. Sometimes it relies on physical access, power imbalances and the assumption that women will not question what they cannot see.
Kerala offers another variation of the same pattern. At a government medical college hospital in Kottayam, a trainee nurse was arrested after a mobile phone was discovered recording inside a staff changing room. The phone had been deliberately placed to capture women as they changed clothes during work hours. The incident surfaced only because someone noticed the device and raised the alarm. Until that moment, the boundary between a professional medical workplace and a voyeuristic trap had collapsed without detection.
A similar case emerged from Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, where police arrested a male nurse at a private medical college and hospital for allegedly filming women colleagues while they were changing. According to investigators, he exploited a physical gap between rooms, using a smartphone to record from an adjacent space. The device was seized and sent for forensic analysis to determine whether the footage had been stored or shared. Once again, the method was simple, almost banal—but the harm profound.
Across these cases, two overlapping systems of abuse are visible. One is the large-scale exploitation of unsecured CCTV networks, where exposed dashboards and default passwords allow outsiders to harvest vast amounts of footage remotely. The other is intimate, insider-driven voyeurism, enabled by hidden devices or misuse of access by staff. Both thrive in environments where privacy is treated as secondary, policies are vague or unenforced, and oversight is minimal.
Law enforcement responses have so far been largely reactive. Arrests are made, phones and hard drives seized, FIRs registered under voyeurism provisions and the Information Technology Act. Cybercrime units issue advisories urging hospitals to change passwords, restrict access and update systems. Hospital administrators promise internal inquiries and tighter controls. Yet these measures typically come after exposure, not before. There is little evidence of systematic audits, mandatory reporting of breaches, or mechanisms to notify victims whose images may already be circulating online.
The absence of survivors’ voices in public reporting is striking, but it should not be mistaken for a lack of impact. Most women filmed in these cases are unlikely to know that their images were captured, let alone sold. Even if they did, speaking out would mean confronting sharam (shame), social stigma and the fear of being blamed for circumstances entirely beyond their control. Silence, in this context, is not consent—it is a symptom of how difficult it is to challenge violations that occur at the intersection of medicine, sexuality and technology.
India’s legal framework has yet to fully reckon with this reality. While data protection rules and IT laws address unauthorised access and obscene material, they were not designed for the complexities of surveillance in healthcare settings. Patients are rarely informed clearly about where cameras are placed, who can access footage, or how long recordings are stored. Consent is assumed rather than meaningfully obtained. Without strict rules on camera placement, access logs, retention limits and independent audits, CCTV remains a grey zone—one that predators can exploit with relative ease.
What is being traded in these underground markets is not just video files. It is trust: trust in hospitals as places of care, trust in technology as protection, trust in the belief that certain moments—childbirth, illness, vulnerability—are private by default. Each leaked clip erodes that trust further. As surveillance expands in the name of safety, the question becomes unavoidable: suraksha kiski? Security for whom? Until hospitals treat privacy as an essential part of care rather than an afterthought, the line between healing and harm will remain dangerously thin.
I’ve been in enough hospitals across Asia to know this: the smell of disinfectant, the thin curtains, the way your dignity gets folded up with your clothes and placed on a chair while strangers poke, prod, and tell you to relax. You tell yourself it’s temporary. You tell yourself it’s safe. You tell yourself this is medicine, not theatre. And then you learn that somewhere, someone pressed “record” and never stopped.
Let me be very clear, darlings: this is not a “tech problem”. This is not an unfortunate side effect of digitisation. This is patriarchy with a Wi-Fi connection.
When cameras creep into labour rooms, gynaecology wards, and changing areas, they don’t just watch walls and corridors. They watch women when we are tired, in pain, bleeding, exposed, unconscious, or terrified. They watch us when we are giving birth, when we are being examined, when we are stripped of every layer except trust. And then—this is the part that makes my blood boil—they sell it. As files. As folders. As content.
Hospitals like to say CCTV is for suraksha—safety. Safety from whom? Not from the men who install cameras where they don’t belong. Not from the staff who abuse access. Not from the silent audience of voyeurs scrolling through Telegram while pretending they’re just “curious”. Safety, it seems, is always something women are expected to surrender in exchange for care.
And before anyone says, “But no one meant for this to happen,” please stop. Negligence is not neutral. Leaving default passwords on hospital cameras is not innocence; it’s indifference. Installing surveillance in spaces where women undress and bleed is not caution; it’s control. The system didn’t “fail”. It worked exactly as it was designed: women monitored, women exposed, women blamed—or more often, never told.
What angers me most is the silence imposed on the victims. Many of these women will never know their images were stolen. Some will suspect, but say nothing, because sharam is heavier than rage, and respectability politics are still our unofficial national religion. Society teaches women that even being violated quietly is preferable to speaking loudly.
So let me speak for them. Hospitals are not porn studios. Patients are not performers. Medical vulnerability is not a kink. If you film women without consent—directly or through your laziness—you are complicit. Full stop.
And to the women reading this: if something feels wrong, trust that instinct. Your discomfort is data. Your privacy is not optional. Healing should never come with an audience.
Spicy Auntie says this once, and loudly: care without dignity is not care. It’s surveillance dressed up as science—and I’m done pretending otherwise.