National Police Gazette

    Muttontown NY, a wealthy suburb of Syosset, Long Island, itself already bursting at the seams with money, witnessed the overeager implementation of the power money can buy when the owners of one of its multimillion-dollar homes held two Indonesian immigrant women prisoner and forced them into the role of slaves. Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, the proprietors of Eternal Love Parfums, snatched the women shortly after they arrived in this country legally in 2002 as temporary visitors here on business. The Sabhnanis then whisked the women -- named Samirah and Nona -- away to their mansion at 205 Coachman Place East outside Syosset where they were imprisoned, tortured, and made to serve the perfume couple's every whim. The Sabhnanis beat Samirah and Nona and threw scalding water on them. One of the women was forced to eat 25 hot chili peppers at one time. They were both forced to sleep on mats in the kitchen like dogs. They were underfed and malnourished. There was no end to the depths the Sabhnanis would go to degrade and demoralize their captives.
    Miraculously, their reign of private terror came to an end when one of the women was discovered wandering in a daze outside a doughnut shop wearing only a pair of pants and a towel. She had managed to escape after taking out the Sabhnanis trash and, not knowing where she was or who to talk to, she simply placed herself in the care of the community at large and prayed that there were at least some among them who possessed the light of common humanity. There were. The proper authorities were summoned and the woman's wretched partner was soon rescued from the manse of Sabhnani.
    Following their arrest, the Sabhnanis tried to buy their way out of another problem of their own doing by offering to personally pay $3.5 million in bail and pony up $15,000 a day for security if only the judge would release them to house arrest pending trial. The entire proceedings had been taken up with the Sabhnanis' attempts to hide their multitudinous and secretive assets and contacts -- both domestic and foreign -- forcing U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Platt to inform their lawyers that Mrs. Platt had not raise any dummies and that he would be denying the motion forthwith. The Sabhnanis now languish in jail awaiting trial on charges of forced labor and harboring illegal residents. They could get 50 years.