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An Indian national who was employed at a Valencia restaurant endured three years of slavery -- including regular beatings -- and was so scared of his boss that he feared for his life if he ever tried to escape, authorities said Wednesday.

The victim's boss, 47-year-old Pardeep Kumar, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of human trafficking and holding a person in involuntary servitude, said Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt. Merrill Ladenheim.


The victim, a 55-year-old man whose identity was not released, came to the U.S. three years ago to work as a chef at Tandoori Grill, Ladenheim said.

After confiscating the chef's passport, Kumar beat his employee with a 2-foot-long piece of steel and a 3-foot-long metal mop handle, Ladenheim said.

The chef also worked seven days a week, about 12 to 14 hours each day, authorities said. He was barred from contact with the outside world, and he allegedly was forced to live in Kumar’s Newhall home.

"He was demoralized over quite a lengthy time," Ladenheim said. "He was extremely terrified."

Investigators learned about the alleged abuse through a chain of communications that spanned halfway around the globe.

A fellow employee at the restaurant informed the chef's brother in Mumbai that his brother was enduring sustained abuse, authorities said.

On Tuesday, the brother in Mumbai sent an email to the county sheriff's department. Later that day, Kumar was arrested and the chef was hospitalized for treatment.

Kumar is being held on $100,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.

The victim is planning to stay in the U.S. to assist in the prosecution of Kumar but plans to return to India, authorities said.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-restaurant-owner-slavery-20150325-story.html
 
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Three years of living in hell with that mean looking sumbitch, smh.

Who wouldn't want to work for such a stellar employer? Bennies are over the top, daily beatings, long work days, daily degradation. But wait, there's more, when the workday is done you get to crack a cold one with your friends at the neighborhood hang out, not...
 
Definitely agree. It really makes you wonder how often this might go on in other cultures/smaller sects within foreign countries who embrace slavery living here in the U.S. It could be happening in all kinds of restaurants and other small businesses and we'd never even know it.

I couldn't find anything on whether or not they knew each other or had some kind of a relationship before he went to work for this mean-assed SOB, but the poor guy travels all the way from India and this is what he gets for his "American Dream." :rage::finger:
 
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I'm thinking his other employees were abused also since it was a former employee who ratted him out. POS needs to spend some time being Bubba's whipping boy.
 
Every time there is a news story about human trafficking and slavery among immigrants in the USA, the culprits are people from countries when slavery or indentured servitude are still a way of life.
I hope that any former "employees" who have been ill treated by this mean bastard will come forward with their own experience.
There is also recent news item about slaves in Thailand and Indonesia used in the fishing industry. There were photos of people locked up in barred cells. The chain of supply is rather complex, and although US and European importers are very strict about the origins of seafood, it turns out that they really cannot verify for sure whether the fishing boat or the packer is not using slave labor. The middle man is well documented, it gets more vague at the source. The bad publicity
and the resulting boycott of seafood will be the best deterrent to these activities. Money talks loudest. So that reasonable priced seafood you got at Trader Joes, or that seafood catf ood might contain some which came from slave labor.
That doesn't mean a lot of, but a little is too much.
 
Slavery IS alive and well. One expert states that there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. In the U.S., more than 10,000 individuals are shipped in every year as slaves, and we estimate there are about 60,000 slaves at any given point within the U.S., although this seems to be a conservative estimate.

It's not at all surprising that these people are Indian, as India claims to have no slaves, stating that the slaves in their country are simply "poor people". This has a lot to do with British rule, when they redefined slaves as "indentured servants". Semantics have prevented these people from being accurately quantified.
 
A lot of people from India come here with their beliefs in tact. Not just rich Indians but poor Indians too. Ideology knows no boarders; the caste system will live on long after this story has been forgotten.
 
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