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Indian couple in US face 20-year jail for torturing maids22 December, 2007 An Asian couple living in the United States faces up to 20 years each in prison for perversely and cruelly abusing, starving, and torturing two housemaids for several years. The two were convicted after an eight-week trial. India-born Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and his Indonesia-born wife Varsha, 46, are a multi-millionaire couple who are naturalized US citizens. The couple owns a perfume business and live in a million-dollar house in the posh Muttontown area, Long Island, New York. In the case, which the US media described as modern-day slavery, the couple cruelly and in perverse ways ill-treated their two Indonesian maids for many years. According to the prosecution, at various times the housemaids were abused, starved, and tortured while being made to work 18-hours a day. The women were punished harshly for trivial incidents such as sleeping late, and for “stealing” food from the dustbin to supplement their meager meals. The two Indonesian women told the jury that they had been beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, made to take freezing showers and climb stairs repeatedly. The maids also said they were often locked up in small closets to hide them from visitors.
In one testimony, one of the maids
recounted to the jury how she had been
forced to eat several hot chillies.
When she vomited, she was forced by
the couple to eat her own vomit. Defense argued that the housemaids were cooking up stories in order to claim US residency. The two maids were out of status at the time one of them escaped and reported the couple to the police with help from locals. The defense even went to the extent of arguing that the two women had mutilated themselves as a part of a native Indonesian ritual. But since the testimony by the two women was so strong, the jury seemed to have no hesitation in returning a guilty verdict on all 12 counts that Mahendar Sabhnani and Varsha were charged with – including forced labor, debt servitude, and harboring illegal immigrants. Most of the media in the United States used the word “slave” or “slavery” while reporting the case. The case had received wide publicity in the US as well as abroad because prosecutors called it “a rare instance of modern-day slavery.” The couple’s lawyers have said they will go in appeal. The local media quoted one of the defense lawyers as saying that “the jury was taken with the histrionics of the witness.” Jurors of the federal court in Central Islip also unanimously decided that the Sabhnanis’ posh mansion, which stands on a half-acre land in Muttontown, must be forfeited to the government as it was used to commit the crime. US District Judge Arthur Spatt scheduled the sentencing for March 28, 2008, and will hold hearing to decide whether the bail of Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani and his wife Varsha should be revoked and that they be sent to a federal prison. Currently, the Sabhnanis are on bail and living in their mansion, which has been temporary turned into prison and are paying almost $10,000 a day for security which keeps an eye on them to ensure that they do not escape. The arrangement was agreed upon after prosecutors said that the couple might flee the United States as they might have funds outside the country.
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