Hong Kong police have arrested a 65-year-old man in connection with a suspected indecent assault case in Mong Kok hours after footage appeared online showing a passenger harassing a schoolgirl sitting in front of him on a bus.
Police said officers intercepted the suspect at the boundary checkpoint of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.
The victim, 17, is understood to be a Form Three student.
The incident took place at around noon on Friday as the KMB bus was stopping near an intersection of Mong Kok Road and Sai Yeung Choi Street South.
The 37-second video filmed from what appeared to be the opposite side of the road shows a man in a white tank top reaching his left arm forward to touch the side of the chest of a girl in a school uniform sitting directly in the row in front of him on the upper deck of the bus.
The victim is looking at her phone and seems to lean forward slightly as if trying to avoid the touch. But she remains in her seat.
In the video, someone is heard shouting loudly from the street “no groping” before the bus drives away.
A source familiar with the case said: “The victim was sitting in the upper deck of bus route 16 earlier in the day. When the bus was travelling along Mong Kok Road, the [man] stretched his arm to touch the chest of the victim.”
Bus route 16 runs between Lam Tin and Tai Kok Tsui on the Kowloon side.
“The victim noticed the touch at the time but did not think too much of it,” the insider said. “It was not until she got home and saw the video online that she realised she had been molested and reported it to the police.”
Bus operator KMB expressed concerns after noticing the footage circulating online and said it was cooperating with the police investigation.