In newly released videos, former UF graduate student Robin Garg, who was sentenced to 180 days in jail for groping dozens of women on campus, tells police he had no sexual intentions and that he was having second thoughts about his actions.
Garg was released from the Alachua County jail Wednesday. He was handed over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which could decide to deport him, though he has already promised to go home to India.
"I just don't like touching anyone; there was no intention of that," Garg tells University Police Department Detective Daymon Kizzar in the videos.
He said his main motivation was to surprise the women and that he liked watching their expressions.
"When I scared a girl, I enjoyed that," Garg says.
In each case, the ploy was the same: He would approach a woman on campus, tell her she had a bug on them and pretend to help remove it.
The videos were filmed in UPD's interrogation room on the night of April 14, after Garg was arrested outside of Library West for groping a female student.
He admits to groping between 30 and 36 women but mentions even higher numbers at other points in the questioning.
He tells police the incidents all happened over a period of five days - from a Friday to a Tuesday, with a break on Sunday.
They occurred mainly near the core of campus, from the Reitz Union North Lawn to Little Hall.
Garg admits he was questioning himself the day he was caught.
"Today, like, I was realizing, I'm doing a wrong thing," Garg says in the video.
"I was just thinking that, like, what I'm doing? I'm here for studying. I should not do this," he says.
He says he was feeling sorry for what he had done but maintains he never hurt any of the women or took pictures of them, as one woman alleged.
He also says that he was polite.
"You can ask any of the girls," he says. "I have not done any mischievous. I have not done anything against them, you can ask; I was very polite."
In the videos, Garg appears to give conflicting answers about whether he touched the women, at first saying he backed off when the women told him not to touch them.
He says he mainly touched the women's backs, only groping the front of their bodies on a few occasions.
"There was two or three or four cases, like, I used to get frontside, or inside the pants, but sexually I didn't like that," he says.
Garg was sentenced to 180 days in jail on Aug. 8. He was given three years of probation and ordered to have no contact with UF, Santa Fe College or any of his victims.
