This Blog is all about me! Purple Vixen!
For a minute there, I actually thought they were talking about ME! Alas, just another villainess whose only REAL crime was she got caught. Here is the heavily biased news report [with my own commentary in red] :
AP May 17th A multimillionaire couple, who ran an international perfume business, were arrested by federal agents on charges of keeping two Indonesian women as slaves in their posh Long Island home in New York for the last several years, according to the Newsday, a prominent New York publication.
The couple, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 45, and her husband, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, were accused of inflicting tortures on one of the Indonesian women, while threatening to have the other one's family arrested in Indonesia if she did not obey orders, according to officials [a tad harsh, I admit, but good help is hard to find!]. The women had been hired as housekeepers.
Varsha, an Indonesian, is married to Mahender Murlidhar, an Indian.
The Sabhnanis were arraigned in a US District Court on charges under a federal anti-slavery laws of obtaining ''the labour and services of another person by use of threats of serious physical harm to and physical restraint against that person.'' [so what about Wal-Mart?] ''No one would ever think that human beings were being brought into the United States and held for slave labour, and beaten, and tortured in a beautiful mansion right here in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods on Long Island, [that's only because they lack imagination]'' said federal prosecutor Demetri Jones yesterday, who is prosecuting the case along with Assistant US attroney Mark Lesko.
The Sabhnanis' lawyers maintain that their clients are innocent. [No kidding! What next?!]
Newsday quoting Jones and Lesko said one of the two Indonesian women was beaten by Varsha Sabhnani with a broomstick, cut behind the ears with a knife, burnt with scalding water, made to walk up and down stairs as much as 150 times in a row, and, at one point, was forced to eat ''25 extremely hot chili peppers.'' [Varsha obviously has a commanding physical presence to be able to handle TWO Indonesian women like this ... mmmmmmmm] The prosecutors submitted pictures showing what they said were the bruises and cuts inflicted on one of the women.
The reasons for the tortures included Varsha Sabhnani being unable to find an item of clothing or believing that the poorly fed women were stealing food, [such insolence!] the prosecutors said. Her husband allowed the torture to go on and benefited from the household services of the women, [typical man ... leaving the dirty work to his wife!] according to Lesko.
Well, when she gets out of jail in 25 years, Varsha has an office waiting for her in my Jakarta headquarters! And I'll bet her perfumes were really nice too!