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A Melbourne woman convicted of keeping a Tamil woman as a slave called her victim in the lead-up to her Supreme Court trial to talk her out of giving evidence.
Kumuthini Kannan was found guilty alongside her husband Kandasamy in 2021 of keeping the woman in domestic servitude in their Glen Waverley home between 2007 and 2015.
Husband and wife offenders Kandasamy and Kumuthini Kannan.Credit: Nine News
She has now admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice, by contacting her victim to discourage her from giving evidence.
The victim, now in her 70s, had said she worked up to 23 hours a day doing housework, caring for the couple’s children and was restricted from going outside or mixing with members of Melbourne’s Tamil community.
She had tea and curries thrown at her, was beaten with a frozen chicken, and when her son-in-law asked the Kannans to let her return home to Tamil Nadu in southern India, they responded “f— you”.
She was rushed to hospital in July 2015 after she collapsed, suffering untreated diabetes and sepsis.
Emergency room doctors described her as “fading away”.
The night before the woman was due to meet with police to go over statements she made while in hospital, where her servitude was uncovered, Kannan phoned the woman’s nursing home from a shopping centre pay phone.
Kannan claimed to be a translator who had worked for the courts for 14 years, and repeatedly told her that she should not give evidence in the upcoming trial for her and her husband.
“Think of me as a mother, trust me, do as I say,” Kannan told the vulnerable woman who weighed just 40kg when she was found by paramedics in the family’s suburban home.
Kannan told the woman that police would not help her and if she listened to police she would never be able to leave Australia or see her daughter again.
“You’ll be here until you perish,” Kannan told her.
Referring to herself in the third person, Kannan told the woman she had taken her on a trip to Sydney and asked if the police had done that for her.
Police and lawyers were in it for the money and to make a name for themselves, she claimed.
The court heard phone records showed a call was made to the woman’s nursing home about 8pm on February 16, 2020, the same time CCTV footage showed Kannan in front of a shopping centre pay phone connected to the number the call came from.
Kannan’s lawyer told the court there were no physical threats made by her to the woman. The lawyer accepted that the woman was vulnerable, but said that arose from the case Kannan had already been sentenced for.
Judge Martine Marich said it was to the victim’s credit that she did not waver and continued assisting police.
Kannan was sentenced to eight years behind bars and ordered to serve at least four for the slavery offences, while her husband is serving at least three years of a six-year sentence.
Kannan will be sentenced for the attempting to pervert the course of justice matter next month.
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