A couple in Australia’s Melbourne was sent to prison for keeping an Indian woman as a slave in their home for eight years
A couple in Australia’s Melbourne was sent to prison for keeping an Indian woman captive as a slave in their home for eight years.
Kumuthini Kannan, 53, and her husband Kandasamy, 57, were found guilty of intentionally possessing and exercising the right of ownership over a slave between 2007 and 2015.
The couple kept the Tamil woman in their home in Mount Waverly as a working prisoner.
Kumuthini was found more morally culpable than her husband while Kandasamy was described to have a weak character and being susceptible to a degree of domination by his wife. Kumuthini was sentenced to eight years in prison while her husband was ordered to spend six years behind the bars.
The court said that Kumuthini must serve at least four years of her sentence while Kandasamy three.
The sentence comes as the first time when an Australian court heard entirely about domestic servitude slavery, and according to prosecutors, the case is the nation’s longest period of enslavement.
Addressing the Victoria supreme court, Justice John Champion on Wednesday said, “No one has expressed any sense of regret or sorrow – it’s a fairly remarkable absence of humanity,” The Guardian quoted.
The couple "strenuously" proclaimed their innocence in front of the court, as they refused to accept that they had enslaved the Tamil woman for eight years.
The judge said that the victim’s life was dominated by financial struggle and deprived circumstances in India. According to The Guardian, she had come to live with the Kannans twice, in 2002 and 2004 and she returned again in 2007 on a one-month tourist visa. She was forced to work up to 23 hours a day, as her chores included caring for the couple’s three children, cooking, cleaning. The report said that the couple only paid her $3 a week for doing all the chores.
The woman in her 60s was found in 2015 in a deplorable state. She was malnourished, weighing only 40 kgs; she had sepsis. uncontrolled diabetes, and was missing teeth.
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 "Melbourne couple sentenced to prison for keeping an Indian woman as slave")
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