Indian woman kept in domestic servitude awarded £184,000 by employment tribunal

Permila Tirkey, from the state of Bihar, was kept in domestic servitude and forced to work as a nanny and cleaner by her Hindu employers in Milton Keynes.

Her family are Adivasis, a term which refers to India’s aboriginal people. They are “scheduled tribes” under the Indian Constitution, which recognises them as historically disadvantaged people.

Her employers, Ajay and Pooja Chandhok, who were a higher caste, were found to have made her work 18 hours a day, seven days a week by an employment tribunal.

Ms Tirkey was made to sleep on a mattress on the floor and was forbidden from bringing her bible with her to the UK.

Nor was she allowed to contact her family and her bank account was controlled by the couple. She was kept by them for four-and-a-half years.

Following the judgment, she said: “I want the public to know what happened to me as it must not happen to anyone else.

“The stress and anxiety that this sort of thing creates for a person can destroy them. I have not been able to smile because my life had been destroyed. Now I am able to smile again. Now I am free.”

The Chandhoks recruited someone from India because, according to the tribunal, “they wanted someone who would be not merely of service but servile”.

They avoided hiring someone from the UK because “no such person would have accepted the intended conditions of work”.

Initially, for a period of 17 months, the Legal Aid Agency refused to fund Ms Tirkey on the basis she was simply making a claim for money and her case was not of “sufficient importance or seriousness”.

Her solicitor, Victoria Marks, of the Anti-Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit, said: “This is a very useful judgment for victims of modern day slavery. We hope that it will give other victims the courage to come forward and seek redress.

“It is important that traffickers do not act with impunity and that they see that their victims can and will hold them to account.”

Counsel for Ms Tirkey, Chris Milsom of Cloisters, said: “Permila Tirkey is a remarkable woman and deserves enormous credit for her patience and stoicism at a time when she was brandished dishonest by those who held her in servitude for four long years.

“Those who have closely followed the legislative history of the Equality Act will recall that the government’s original rationale for refusing explicit prohibition of caste-based discrimination was that there was no evidence of it taking place in the UK.

“The damning findings of the employment tribunal render that stance untenable. Where such discrimination exists its victims must be protected.”