Court denies bail to man charged with indecent assault over allegedly splashing unknown liquid on women
A man has been denied bail and remanded in custody after being charged with indecent assault over allegedly splashing unknown liquid on women in three separate incidents.
The 26-year-old defendant, surnamed Cheng, appeared at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Saturday following his arrest on Thursday.
According to the prosecution, Cheng, an IT technician, indecently assaulted X on an escalator near exit C of Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station on October 2.
He was also charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm in relation to the incident with X.
Citing social media posts, local outlets reported that X had tried to stop Cheng from leaving and that she suffered a fractured finger during the scuffle.
This is not the first time such incidents have occurred in recent years. In 2024, an Instagram page was set up detailing incidents in which women were reportedly splashed with an unknown liquid while walking on the streets.
The act has been labelled as a kind of sexual violence, and arrests have been made from time to time.
In April, a 34-year-old man who pleaded guilty to splashing unknown liquid on three women was handed a three-month suspended sentence, a kind of jail term that does not have to be served unless the defendant re-offends within a period of time.
January incidents
Police said during a press briefing on Friday that an investigation into X’s report revealed Cheng was a suspect in two similar alleged indecent assault incidents in Tsim Sha Tsui in January this year.
Cheng was also charged with indecently assaulting Y on an escalator in the iSquare shopping mall on January 23, and with indecently assaulting Z on an escalator near exit C of the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station.
The defence applied for bail for Cheng when he appeared in court on Saturday, which the prosecution opposed. The judge denied him bail after hearing both parties’ statements.
He was remanded in custody and is set to appear in court on Friday for a bail review.
Indecent assault is punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment, although sentences delivered at the magistrates’ court are capped at two years, or three years when there is more than one indictable offence.
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Hillary Leung is a journalist at Hong Kong Free Press, where she reports on local politics and social issues, and assists with editing. Since joining in late 2021, she has covered the Covid-19 pandemic, political court cases including the 47 democrats national security trial, and challenges faced by minority communities.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Hillary completed her undergraduate degree in journalism and sociology at the University of Hong Kong. She worked at TIME Magazine in 2019, where she wrote about Asia and overnight US news before turning her focus to the protests that began that summer. At Coconuts Hong Kong, she covered general news and wrote features, including about a Black Lives Matter march that drew controversy amid the local pro-democracy movement and two sisters who were born to a domestic worker and lived undocumented for 30 years in Hong Kong.
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