NEW YORK: Indian-origin millionaire Long Island couple Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani, accused of slave driving their maid servants, have been convicted by a jury in a Manhattan court last week. The Judge, however, did not set any date for sentencing.

 The jury convicted the Sabhnani couple in a so-called "modern-day slavery" case having found them guilty of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude and harboring aliens. In a court room drama that unfolded Dec 17, one of the Sabhnanis’ three daughters fainted upon hearing the verdict, even as Varsha Sabhnani collapsed against her husband’s chest.

The judge had to stop proceedings and clear the courtroom to allow for the two women to be taken to hospital for treatment, the Daily News and New York Newsday reported. The mother and daughter were released from the hospital emergency room later the same day. The verdict brought an end to a trial that portrayed the Sabhnanis’ elegant mansion in Muttontown, Long Island, as a house of horrors for the two victims, who came to America for a better life but ended up making pennies an hour under horrendous conditions.

Mainstream papers reported from court depositions of the victims who said they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, forced to climb stairs and take freezing cold showers as punishment for various misdeeds. One victim was forced to eat dozens of chili peppers against her will, and then was forced to eat her own vomit when she couldn’t keep the peppers down, prosecutors said.

The defense contended the two women concocted the story as a way of escaping the house for more lucrative opportunities. They also argued the housekeepers practiced witchcraft and may have abused themselves as part of an Indonesian self-mutilation ritual. Prosecutors said the Sabhnanis face up to 40 years in prison, although attorneys said the punishments could be far less. The government also could seize their mansion, where they kept two Indonesian women as housekeepers, as prosecutors had requested, according to the New York dailies.

Expectedly, defense attorneys said they would appeal. One of the newspapers quoted lawyer Stephen Scaring who said another of the Sabhnanis’ daughters, Tina, was in disbelief; the couple has three daughters and a teenage son. "We never did anything to anybody. How could this happen to us in America?" Tina Sabhnani told the defense lawyer. Over six weeks of testimony that included the two Indonesian women testifying through an interpreter, prosecutors laid out evidence that pointed to what they called a case of "modern-day slavery."

Assistant US Attorney Mark Lesko said in closing arguments that the poorly educated women barely eked out a living in Indonesia and came to the US to work as housekeepers for $100 or $150 a month — all of which was sent to their relatives back home. One of the women arrived in the Sabhnanis’ Muttontown home in 2002; the second came in 2005. Their passports and other travel documents were immediately confiscated by the Sabhnanis, the women testified. Lesko said the maids were subjected to "punishment that escalated into a cruel form of torture" that ended last May when one of the women finally fled in the early morning hours of Mother’s Day. She wandered into a Dunkin’ Donuts, where employees called police.

The women said they were tortured and beaten for misdeeds that included sleeping late or stealing food from trash bins because they were poorly fed. Both women, Samirah and Enung, also said they were forced to sleep on mats in the kitchen.

The women have been cared for during the investigation by Catholic Charities, and it was unclear where they would go after the trial. Although Varsha Sabhnani, 45, was identified as the primary culprit in inflicting punishment, Lesko said her husband, 51, was charged with the same crimes because he allowed the conduct to take place and benefited from the work the women performed in his home.

He also noted that because the Sabhnanis’ international perfume business is run out of an office adjacent to the home, the husband was likely privy to the discipline being imposed by his wife. "Ask yourself who is worse," Lesko said to the jury. "The twisted soul who tortures maids or the man of the house who lets it happen?" "This did not happen in the 1800s," he said. "This happened in the 21st century. This happened in Muttontown, New York."

The Sabhnanis spent nearly three months in jail following their arrest before a judge signed off on a bail package that required the couple to post $4.5 million and pay an estimated $10,000 a day for round-the-clock security monitoring while they were kept under house arrest. Prosecutors had argued the Sabhnanis — he is from India, and she is from Indonesia, but both are naturalized US citizens — were a flight risk.

The trial also provided a glimpse into the growing problem in the United States of domestic workers being exploited in slave-like conditions.