[ad_1]
LONDON: An Indian-origin man who ran a secretive extremist Maoist cult in London and was sentenced to 23 years in jail by a UK court docket for a string of sexual assaults six years in the past has died in jail.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, identified to his followers as Comrade Bala, was sentenced for six counts of indecent assault, 4 counts of rape and two counts of precise bodily hurt again in 2016.
The 81-year-old discovered responsible of “brutal” violence died in custody at HMP Dartmoor jail in south-west England on Friday, the UK Jail Service stated.
The cult chief had been convicted following a jury trial in December 2015, the place it emerged that he had saved his daughter in captivity for over 30 years of her life.
The daughter described her state of affairs in court docket as “horrible, dehumanising and degrading”.
Sentencing Balakrishnan in January 2016, the decide stated: “You determined to deal with her as a mission, not an individual.
You claimed to do it for her to guard her from the skin world, however you created a merciless surroundings.”
Balakrishnan, born in a village in Kerala, lived and grew up in Singapore and Malaysia earlier than shifting to the UK in 1963 to check on the London Faculty of Economics.
It’s there that he met Chanda, whom he married in 1969 at in regards to the time he started his collective.
Scotland Yard raided the couple’s flat in Brixton, south London, in November 2013 after two followers had referred to as the Palm Cove Society charity in search of assist.
Balakrishnan had denied expenses of rape and instructed the jury that he was “the main target of competitors” between “jealous” ladies who made sexual advances at him.
The sentencing adopted a prolonged investigation right into a case which Scotland Yard detectives described as “fully distinctive”.
Detective chief superintendent Tom Manson, from the Metropolitan Police’s Organised Crime Command, stated on the time: “It appears extraordinary that Balakrishnan may command such management over so many individuals, nonetheless the entire victims have instructed us in nice element that they very a lot believed his claims of energy and greatness and the threats he made to them.
All of them described emotions of worry and being completely managed him.
“The entire ladies have confronted enormous challenges in adapting to day-to-day life since they left Balakrishnan’s management however with the assist of numerous charities and professionals are making distinctive progress and their bravery deserves recognition and reward,” he added.
[ad_2]
Source link
