Jail for ‘slave trade’ millionairess

A MILLIONAIRESS who inflicted years of abuse on two housekeepers she treated like slaves in her New York mansion has been jailed for 11 years.

Varsha Sabhnani, 46, was convicted with her husband in December of forced labour, conspiracy, involuntary servitude and harbouring aliens.

The victims were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, and forced to climb stairs and take freezing showers as punishment.

District Court Judge Arthur Spatt called the testimony “eye-opening... that things like that go on in our country”.

Federal sentencing guidelines had recommended a range of 12 to 15 years in prison for Sabhnani, who was identified as the one who inflicted the abuse.

“I just want to say that I love my children very much,” she told the court as two of her grown children looked on.

Mahender Sabhnani, 51, who is free on bail while awaiting his own sentencing, wept as he watched his wife sentenced.

He was charged with the same crimes because he allowed the conduct to take place and benefited from the work the women did, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the maids were subjected to “punishment that escalated into a cruel form of torture,” which ended in May 2007, when one of the women fled on Mother’s Day. She wandered into a restaurant wearing nothing but rags and employees called police.

The women, whose relatives in Indonesia were paid about $100 a month for their services, said they were tortured and beaten for offences that included sleeping late or stealing food from rubbish bins because they were poorly fed.

One was forced to eat dozens of chilli peppers against her will, and then was forced to eat her own vomit when she could not keep them down, prosecutors said.

One of the women arrived in the Sabhnanis’ Muttontown home in 2002; the second came in 2005. Their passports and other documents were immediately confiscated.

The couple’s lawyers, who intend to appeal, claim the two women concocted the story as a way of escaping the house for more lucrative opportunities. They also argued the housekeepers practiced witchcraft and may have abused themselves as part of a self-mutilation ritual.