Geneva: A Swiss court sentenced Britain’s richest Indian family to prison for abusing domestic workers.
According to the French news agency AFP, a Swiss court acquitted the Hinduja family of human trafficking charges, but convicted them of mistreatment of domestic workers.
According to the news agency, Prakash Hinduja and his wife Kamal Hinduja have been sentenced to four years and six months, while their son Ajay and his wife Namrita have been sentenced to four years in prison.
The Hinduja family was accused of bringing three people from their native India as domestic workers to their luxury mansion in Geneva and confiscating their passports on arrival in Switzerland.
The prosecution counsel told the court that the Hinduja family used to pay very low wages to their employees and they did not have the freedom to go out of the house.
According to prosecutors, employees were paid less than $8 for 18 hours of work, less than a tenth of the amount required under Swiss law.
During the trial, prosecutors alleged that the Hinduja family spent more on their dogs than on their servants.
It should be noted that the Hinduja Group, worth 47 billion dollars, has offices in 38 countries with investments in oil, gas, banking and healthcare sectors, where about 200,000 people work for them.
