An evil Sri Lankan immigrant couple who held an Indian grandmother as a domestic slave for eight years have had the profits from the sale of their Melbourne house seized and been ordered to pay extra penalties.
Kumuthini Kannan, 58, was jailed for eight years and her husband Kandasamy Kannan, 61, was jailed for six years in 2021 for trapping their victim in the Mount Waverley home between 2007 and 2015 and forcing her to work 23-hour days.
Their victim, now in her 70s, was subjected to horrific physical abuse and when she was found by paramedics she was lying in a pool of her own urine, was covered in sores, suffering from sepsis, was so malnourished all her teeth had fallen out, and weighed just 40kg.
Kumuthini, a refugee who came to Australia in 1984, was also sentenced to an extra year in jail for trying to intimidate her victim in the lead-up to the couple’s Supreme Court trial, after which Justice John Champion said: “No one has expressed any sense of regret or sorrow – it’s a fairly remarkable absence of humanity”.
The Australia Federal Police said on Friday that proceeds from the sale of the house where the slave was held had been forfeited, and the couple had been ordered to pay another $140,000 in combined penalties to the Commonwealth.
The home sold for $1.4 million in 2016 and the couple’s equity of about $475,000 was held by the Official Trustee and restrained prior to its forfeiture in 2022.
About $485,000 was granted to the victim in 2023, and on October 9 Kumuthini agreed to pay a pecuniary penalty of $100,000 and Kandasamy agreed to pay $40,000, in addition to the forfeited equity and accrued interest, the AFP said.
The couple’s trial heard that they had an arranged marriage that resulted in Kandasamy being sponsored for a skilled migrant visa by his wife in 1991, even though he had not met her until he arrived in Melbourne.
Kumuthini claimed to suffer from depression and asked for leniency in sentencing due to poor mental health as a result of struggling to raise the couple’s three autistic children.
But the sentencing judge condemned the couple for telling a large amount of “brazen” lies, called their conduct “disgraceful”, and reprimanded the Department of Immigration for being “missing in action”.
Kumuthini was given a four-year non-parole period and will be eligible for release early next year, while Kandasamy was given a three-year non-parole period.
Header image: The slaver couple with their children (Facebook). Right, the Mount Waverley home (AFP).
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