A communist cult leader was found guilty of imprisoning and mistreating his daughter and of raping two followers in a south London commune described as “full of violence and horror”.
After a three-week trial, Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, was convicted of 14 separate charges relating to the Maoist cult he ran in Brixton from 1975 to 2013. He is facing life in prison.
Met police carried out a two-year investigation into Balakrishnan and described the case as a "complex" and "completely unique" one in which women were bound by invisible handcuffs.
Balakrishnan and his wife, Chanda Pattni, were arrested and bailed in 2013 amid allegations that they had held the three women as "slaves" in a property they rented from a housing association in Brixton.
The victims were rescued by police on 25 October 2013 after one had called anti-slavery group Freedom Charity to say that she was being held against her will.
When police entered the premises it was "unpleasant" and "stuffy". The heating was on and the windows were shut, Detective Sergeant Paul Wiggett said at a press briefing at Scotland Yard on Wednesday.
The apartment was full of old newspapers and there were stacks of books, though "nothing overtly political". The women were forced to write down every detail of their actions and activities, including toilet visits.
Wiggett said they lived a "primitive lifestyle" with hardly any clothes or technology. Although the rest of the house resembled that of a hoarder, Balakrishnan's daughter's bedroom was stark, Wiggett added.
Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Manson, from the Met's organised crime command, said: "Over 40 hours of carefully conducted interviews, these women told us about the abuse they endured at the hands of Balakrishnan spanning decades.
"It seems extraordinary that Balakrishnan could command such control over so many people, however all of the victims have told us in great detail that they very much believed his claims of power and greatness and the threats he made to them. They all described feelings of fear and being totally controlled by him."
Balakrishnan's daughter said in an impact statement read out in court: "There are no words to express the pain that Bala[krishnan] and the collective has caused me. I was bullied, tormented, humiliated, isolated, and degraded.
"I lived in constant fear and was deprived of a normal life. I missed out on family. I never even knew who my mother was until after she died. My uncle, my grandparents, and other family members never even knew I existed."
In 2014 charges against Chanda Pattni were dropped due to “insufficient evidence".
Balakrishnan was a devout follower of the teachings of the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, the court heard. Over time, the prosecution said, he used "calculated" methods to brainwash his female followers into believing that he had magical powers.
Rosina Cottage QC, for the crown, told the jury that the women lived a life of "violence, fear, isolation, and confinement", The Telegraph reported.
They were brainwashed into thinking Balakrishnan, who was also referred to as Comrade Bala, could kill them instantly simply by touching them on a pressure point, Cottage added. He convinced the women that they would die if they did not worship him as a god.
He held such power over two of the women that they would wait obediently as though "by appointment" before he sexually abused them, Cottage said.
The sexual abuse against two of the women is thought to have started in 1979 during the time his wife, Pattni, spent time in hospital due to a diabetic coma.
In court Balakrishnan made a number of eccentric claims. He believed that the space shuttle disaster of 1986 was caused by a challenge to his leadership, The Independent reported.
He also claimed he had an invisible mind-controlling accomplice named Jackie – an acronym for Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna, and Immortal Easwaran – that was responsible for a series of global events, including the election of Jeremy Corbyn.
He had told one victim that he had to beat her or else Jackie would kill or torture her, the court heard.
Balakrishnan arrived in the UK from Singapore in 1963. The 23-year-old travelled on a British Council scholarship and enrolled at the London School of Economics, where he quickly became immersed in communist protest groups, The Telegraph reported.
David Vipond, a former communist who had met Balakrishnan at meetings, told The Telegraph that he was a “charismatic and dominant” individual who “saw himself as a big shot”.
When the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist) was founded in 1968 Balakrishnan was a senior member and had already started to behave in a “cultish” way, Vipond said.
However, in July 1974 Balakrishnan and his “small clique” were suspended from the party due to “their pursuance of conspiratorial and splittist activities”.
The party also accused Balakrishnan of “cowardly” attacks by calling it “fascist”, according to a statement released by its central committee.
After his suspension Balakrishnan formed a more radical group called Workers' Institute of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Tsetung Thought.
Two years later he and his wife set up the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre, a communist squat in Acre Lane, Brixton.
The centre operated as a commune housing around 13 members, mostly women. Half were in paid employment and donated their earnings to the group, while the other six were described as doing “full-time revolutionary work”.
On 22 March 1978 police raided the property, and the Mao Memorial Centre was shut down, forcing Balakrishnan's far-left cult to go underground.
But as his views became more extreme, the group gradually disintegrated. Some members left the cult, while others had been deported and so could no longer participate, according to a Telegraph report.
Only a few of his followers stayed loyal to him, including the two victims and his daughter's mother.
Balakrishnan's daughter, who is now aged 32 and cannot be named for legal reasons, lived a lonely life of confinement and hardly left the commune alone.
She had no idea that another cult member, who died aged 44 in 1997, was her mother.
Police said Balakrishnan had an "unbelievable" amount of control, so much so that his daughter "honestly believed she was going to explode" if she left the house. "He had treated his daughter like a project," Detective Sergeant Wiggett said.
Speaking to the court via video link the daughter recalled a time in February 1996 when, aged 13, she was beaten and accused of being a "fascist agent" by her father for singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
"The Rasta downstairs had a partner and she had just had a baby. She was singing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' to the baby, and I sang the song as well, and all day I was accused of being a fascist agent, for singing the song the fascist agents downstairs were singing," she said, according to the Press Association.
"I ended up in the bathroom at night, I hugged the tap and the toilet, and thanked them for being nice to me. I had been told that if I was bad then the toilet wouldn't flush, but it did work. I kissed the handle of the flush for being on my side for not refusing to work," she said.
The court heard of one report from a concerned neighbour who contacted Lambeth council about a teenage girl who had never been to school. However, the authorities failed to follow up on her whereabouts as the group moved around London living in several different locations.
She had once tried to escape the commune aged 22. Someone spotted her and took her to a police station, where she explained she had run away from home.
A verbal agreement between the daughter, her father, and a civilian member of police staff took place. Although the details of the conversation are "not clear" it is understood that there was no agreement to follow up the discussion as no criminal allegations were made at the time, Wiggett added.
Balakrishnan's daughter was sent back to the commune where she endured a further eight years of imprisonment.
Balakrishnan will be sentenced on 29 January.