Aravindan Balakrishnan, the leader of a Maoist group who was arrested last November for allegedly keeping three women in his house in Brixton here against their will, was on Thursday booked by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on 25 charges including false imprisonment, cruelty to a person under 16 years, indecent assault and rape.
He will appear before Westminster Magistrates Court on December 17. According to Scotland Yard, Mr. Balakrishnan faces 19 counts of indecent assault and four rape charges spanning from 1980 to 1987.
‘Victims tortured’Mr. Balakrishnan (73), who founded a breakaway faction of the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist Leninist) in the early 1970s, and his wife Chanda Pattni (67), were found to have held three women of Malay, Irish and British descent in a state of domestic slavery from 1983-2013. The women are alleged to have been subjected to physical and mental torture during these years.
They managed to make contact with a women’s rights organisation, which then alerted the police. The Metropolitan Police and NGO Freedom Charity rescued them last November in a carefully planned joint operation. Ms. Pattni was released earlier this year when prosecutors decided there was “insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction”.
Anthony Connell, senior prosecutor at the CPS, said: “The CPS today [Thursday] authorised the police to charge Aravindan Balakrishnan with a number of charges including false imprisonment, cruelty to a person under 16 years, indecent assault and rape.
Mr. Balakrishnan was also accused of “unlawfully and injuriously imprisoning” a woman between January 6, 1983, and January 7, 1999.
