Victims Were Beaten, Burned, Forced To Eat Their Own Vomit
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (CBS) ―
A jury found a wealthy Muttonstown couple guilty Monday of enslaving two Indonesian women who they hired as housekeepers, before treating them in a torturous manner with painful physical and psychological punishments.
The millionaire couple, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and his wife Varsha Mahender, 45, were each convicted of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, peonage, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens.
Mr. Sabhnani immediately began stroking his immediately stunned wife and holding her face as the verdict was read.
Mrs. Sabhnani and her daughter Dakshina then both collapsed in the courtroom after the verdict was read and were taken to an area hospital, prompting the judge to postpone remaining court proceedings until Tuesday
The Sabhnanis, who have three other children and who operate a worldwide perfume business out of their Muttontown home on Long Island's Gold Coast, could face up to 40 years in prison, although attorneys predicted the punishment would be considerably less.
During the trial, the two Indonesian women detailed the horrific acts of abuse they were subjected to for even the slighest errors in their ways. Those punishments included being victimized with umbrellas, knives, and brooms.
One of the victims, a 51-year-old woman identified only as "Samirah," claimed that at the hands of Mrs. Sabhnani, she was scalded, sliced, clubbed, cut, and pinched. She said her ears were pulled, fingers bent, body taped, and she said she'd even suffered a broken hand.
As for Mr. Sabhnani, Samirah testified that he and some of the couple's four children at times saw her naked, when "the Missus" ordered her to remove her clothes as humiliation.
The Indonesian servant said for small mistakes such as if she slept late or was tardy when beckoned, Mrs. Sabhnani would use "a club to hit me in the mouth til my teeth fell off," she said.
She added that she would be starved at times and forced to take food from the trash. "I got up at 4 a.m. to scrub and cook for the Missus. I only ate at noon, two slices of bread," she said. And she maintained that she was scalded with boiling water -- if she complained -- until "the skin was cooked."
The visibly distraught woman seemed to claim most of the torture was at the hands of Mrs. Sabhnani, who another time made her vomit when she was forced to eat 100 hot chili peppers.
"Not satisfied that I wasn't dead yet, she ordered me to swallow six spoonfuls of chili powder, mixed with salt and water," she said. After she vomited, she claimed Mrs. Sabhnani made her eat the vomit.
When asked if she fought back, Samirah said: "No, I asked the Missus for forgiveness."
Court observers wonder why Samirah didn't run away sooner, after she was found inside a Dunkin' Donuts in May in an apparent daze, leading employees to call for help. She, along with another Indonesian woman identified as Enung, were taken into custody by police where they told of the alleged abuse.
But defense attorneys contend the housekeepers engaged in witchcraft and may have abused themselves as part of an Indonesian self-mutilation ritual.
The Sabhnanis spent nearly three months in jail following their arrest before a judge signed off on a bail package that required the couple to post $4.5 million and pay an estimated $10,000 a day for round-the-clock security monitoring while they were kept under house arrest.
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