A married couple suspected of holding three women as slaves for more than 30 years are former Maoist activists Aravindan Balakrishnan and hi...
A married couple suspected of holding three women as slaves for more than 30 years are former Maoist activists Aravindan Balakrishnan and his wife Chanda, the BBC understands.nnAccording to Marxist archives they were leading figures at the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre based in Acre Lane, Brixton, south London, in the 1970s.nnIt was raided by police and five people, including the pair, were held.nnMr Balakrishnan, 73, and his 67-year-old wife were arrested on Thursday.nnThree women were rescued from their home in Brixton a month earlier.nnThe couple has been linked to 13 addresses across London, the Met has confirmed. The force would not confirm or deny their names.nnPolice carried out house-to-house inquiries in and around Peckford Place, Brixton - where the women were rescued - over the weekend.nnOfficers said the women had suffered years of "physical and mental abuse".nnThey lived together as a "collective" after two of the women met the man through a "shared political ideology".nnThe three alleged victims, a 30-year-old Briton, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 69-year-old Malaysian, are in the care of a non-governmental organisation following their rescue last month.nPrevious arrestsnnPolice said the 30-year-old woman, who is believed to have lived her entire life in servitude, had a birth certificate but no other official papers.nnShe is said to have written more than 200 impassioned letters and poems to her neighbour over an eight-year period, the Daily Mail reported.nnIn one of the letters, she said she felt like a "fly trapped in a spider's web" and described her "unspeakable torment". nnThe case came to light after the Irish woman rang Freedom Charity to say she had been held against her will.nnThe couple were arrested on Thursday on suspicion of being involved in forced labour and slavery. They have also been arrested for immigration offences.nnThey have been released on bail until January.n'Complex case'nnPolice said they were of Indian and Tanzanian origin and came to the UK in the 1960s. They were previously arrested in the 1970s, but police will not say why and it is not known if they were charged.nnThirty-seven officers from the Met's human trafficking unit are working on the case.nnLambeth Council said it had been working closely with the police in the weeks before the women's rescue.nnA spokesperson said: "This is an extremely complex case involving a number of individuals going back decades.nn"It is too early at this stage to provide the detail of any contact we may have had with them."nnThe council said the security, confidentiality and well-being of those involved was paramount. Less
