Three people, including a woman of Indian origin, have been found guilty of treating a mother of four from Hyderabad in India like a slave and sexually abusing her after an eight-week trial by jury.
The Hyderabad woman, who cannot be named, had moved to the United Kingdom in 2005 and was badly abused and mistreated by three families with whom she worked as a nanny and domestic worker.
The three people convicted by the jury in Croydon crown court in London — 54-year-old Shashi Kala Obhrai, 33-year-old Shamina Yousuf, and 54-year-old Enkarta Balapovi — were part of three couples who had been charged by Scotland Yard in May 2012 for abuse and alleged trafficking of the Indian woman from Hyderabad.
The trio will be sentenced on May 16 by the judge in Croydon crown court.
The Indian woman, who had moved to the UK on a domestic worker visa in 2005, was subjected to several years of terrifying cruelty and violence in three different households in London by the three couples. She eventually managed to escape to safety in 2008, but the police investigation into the abuses — trafficking and forced labour — only started in 2010 once her case was taken up by Liberty, a rights organisation in London.
Shashi Kala, an optician, was found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and of making threats to kill against the victim, but was cleared of the charge of trafficking within the UK for exploitation.