She was arrested yesterday evening following a report lodged against her by a police officer over the incident when she was booked for an alleged traffic offence on Monday. The clip of her arguing with the policeman has gone viral.

“Yes, I was arrested by officers from the Brickfields police station. They took my statement and released me on bail after two hours,” Gayathri told FMT.

“Investigating me is fine but I wonder why I was arrested for questioning a police officer who was filming me on his handphone while I was arguing with another constable over my rights.”

Gayathri, who gave permission to be identified for this report, said she had given her full cooperation to the police and hoped her complaint against the policeman who was filming her will also be looked into by the authorities.

Yesterday, Brickfields police chief Amihizam Abdul Shukor said that the case was being investigated under Section 186 of the Penal Code for obstructing civil servants from carrying out their duty; and Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1998 for offensive online content intended to threaten or harass another person, among other things.

He said initial investigation showed that the incident happened on Monday at about 3.40pm and the video is still accessible to the public on Tik Tok.

“The video has 274 shares on Facebook and 5,414 shares on Tiktok and we are concerned that this video posted on social media could bring down the image of the police department,” he said in a statement.

The NST reported that the 40-second video clip which was widely shared on Tiktok and Facebook was not recorded or uploaded by the suspect, but instead by a TikTok user named @chellom01.