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Couple found guilty in slave case

ROBERT E. KESSLER

December 18, 2007

On Aug. 21, Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani were released from jail in a bail deal that turned their home into a prison.

Now the couple face time behind actual bars--prison sentences that federal attorneys have estimated at close to 20 years.

The Sabhnanis were convicted yesterday of charges both horrific and bizarre--criminal acts in a seemingly unbelievable script spreading over five years in one of Long Island's most upscale neighborhoods.

But a federal jury had no trouble yesterday in concluding that two Indonesian women were telling the truth when they graphically testified that they had been enslaved and tortured after they had come to the United States to work as domestics for the wealthy Muttontown couple.

After a six-week trial, the jury, in less than two days and two hours of deliberations in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, found Varsha Sabhnani, 46, and her husband Mahender, 51, each guilty on all 12 counts they were charged with, including forced labor, debt servitude and harboring illegal immigrants. The two women, who use only the single names Enung and Samirah, had come to the United States to support their children in Indonesia.

As the final guilty verdict against Mahender Sabhnani was read by the jury foreman, chaos erupted. One of the Sabhnanis' daughters, Dakshina, collapsed in her seat directly behind her parents and shortly, in apparently semiconscious state, began to shout, "Papa, Papa, Papa."

Her mother, Varsha, who had been softly weeping with her head on the chest of her stoic-looking husband, leaned over the court railing to comfort her. Then she dropped to the courtroom floor, repeatedly mouthing what appeared to be the name of one of her daughters, though it was not clear whether she was saying the name of Dakshina or another daughter, Tina, who had been sitting alongside her sister. A third daughter, Pooja, also in the front row of seats, wept through the scene. The three daughters are in their early twenties.

"We didn't do anything to anybody," Tina eventually said. "How could this happen to us?"

Dakshina and Pooja had both figured in court testimony, although they were not charged, concerning claims by the Indonesian women that they were being starved.

Pooja was said to have chained the main refrigerator closed in the Sabhnanis' home when the family went on vacation so that the Indonesian women could not have access to food inside. Dakshina was said to have informed on Samirah, telling her parents that the Indonesian woman had taken a forbidden sip of milk from the family refrigerator. Attorneys for their parents denied that either woman or their parents had done anything wrong.

A picture of Samirah drinking milk, found in a locked box by federal agents searching the Sabhnanis' bedroom, was used by federal prosecutors Mark Lesko and Demetri Jones during the trial. They said the Sabhnanis had forced Samirah to recreate the milk-drinking scene, and told Samirah that, if she ever acted up, the picture would be sent to her children in Indonesia as "proof" that their mother was a thief.

"We're very disappointed in the verdict," said Jeffrey Hoffman, Varsha Sabhnani's lawyer. He said the jury "was taken with the histrionics" of the enslaved domestic workers, who provided detailed testimony about years of abuse and torture at the hands of the Sabhnanis.

"There are a number of appeals," Hoffman said. "We will pursue this so that they get justice ... We're shocked."

And Stephen Scaring, Mahender Sabhnani's attorney, said, "We're disappointed, and we're going to take an appeal."

The federal prosecutors, Lesko and Jones, declined to comment.

The chaos when Varsha Sabhnani and Dakshina collapsed in midmorning caused U.S. District Judge Arthur Spatt to clear the courtroom until the women were taken by ambulance to Southside Hospital in Bay Shore.

By 3 p.m. they had been released from the hospital and returned home, where the Sabhnanis have been confined by round-the-clock shifts of armed guards at their expense. Sources said tests - both those taken in the courtroom by emergency medical technicians as well as later tests at the hospital - showed that mother and daughter were both in normal health.

Spatt said he would ask the jurors to return to court today so that they could, as is routine, be polled individually as to whether each had arrived at the same verdict. But he added, "As far as I'm concerned, the verdict has been reached ... It's over and done with."

Also today, either the judge or the jury will be asked to decide whether the government can seize the Sabhnanis' home. Lesko and Jones had asked that it be forfeited as having been used in the commission of a crime. In addition, the federal prosecutors may ask Spatt to remand the Sabhnanis to prison immediately.