A 67-year-old woman who was arrested on suspicion of keeping three women as slaves in a Maoist cult in London for over 30-years, has been released from police bail. The pensioner believed to be Chanda Pattni, was arrested with her husband Aravindan Balakrishnan in Brixton last November, after an alleged victim contacted a charity and said she had been held for decades along with two other women.
Balakrishnan, 73, who was arrested on November 21 along with his wife, has been re-bailed to a date in mid-December, the Met police said. He was also further arrested in relation to serious sexual offences in July the police added.
The Met said: "A 73-year-old man arrested on Thursday 21 November 2013 in connection with an investigation into slavery and domestic servitude and further arrested in relation to serious sexual offences on Tuesday 29 July 2014 has been re-bailed to a date in mid-December."
It was alleged that the three females, a Briton, an Irish women and a Malaysian, were kept in the cult for 30 years.
Pattni and Balakrishnan were arrested after one of the women contacted Freedom charity after seeing television coverage on forced marriages. The charity which helps victims of honour based violence contacted the Met police who waited a few days before making the arrests. At the time, the police said the group would have appeared to be a normal family to the outside world. Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s human trafficking unit said the case was "completely unique, " at the time of the arrests.
It later emerged that the couple had run an extreme Maoist collective at their south London home, but there was no suggestion the members were physically held against their will.
