'Peeping' economist indicted for groping student on train

TOKYO — Prosecutors on Wednesday indicted economist Kazuhide Uekusa, once a well-known TV commentator, for allegedly molesting a female high school student on a train in Tokyo in September.Uekusa, 45, was convicted in March last year of public indecency by trying to look up a 17-year-old girl's skirt at a Tokyo railway station in 2004, using a mirror, and did not appeal. He was a professor at Waseda University at that time.

In the latest case, Uekusa allegedly put his hand up the student's skirt and touched her body at around 10:10 p.m. on Sept 13 on an express commuter train between Shinagawa and Keikyu Kamata stations on the Keihin Kyuko Line.

On the train, the girl, a second-year high school student from Kanagawa Prefecture, said, "Stop it," and she and other passengers seized Uekusa and handed him over to policemen.

After he was arrested, he was discharged from the Nagoya University of Commerce & Business where he was serving as visiting professor at its graduate school.

In the 2004 case, he pleaded not guilty during the trial, but the court convicted him and fined him 500,000 yen. His mirror was confiscated as part of the punishment.