Judge Delays Bail Revocation Hearing in Muttontown Slave Case

By Robert E. Kessler, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Sep. 11–A federal judge postponed until next week a hearing to determine whether a Muttontown couple should be returned to jail for allegedly violating the conditions that allowed them to be released to home detention.

The couple, Mahender Sabhnani and his wife, Varsha, had been released three weeks ago on $4.5 million bail, along with other conditions, after 14 weeks in jail on charges of enslaving two Indonesian woman they had hired as housekeepers.

Monday, they were returned to the federal court in Central Islip accompanied by a team of four armed guards, part of the group that has been guarding them around the clock as part of their release to their home.

But after a short hearing, the Sabhnanis left the courthouse surrounded by the armed guards and were returned to their home after U.S. District Judge Thomas Platt said he would rule Sept. 19 on whether the Sabhanis had violated the conditions of the bail.

Platt acted after he told both prosecutors and defense attorneys to get together privately and agree on all the facts in the situation.

Prosecutors had accused the couple in court papers filed early yesterday of violating the conditions of their bail by not operating their multimillion perfume business from their Muttontown home at 205 Coachman Place East. Rather, federal prosecutors said that while they were in jail, the Sabhnanis set up three employees to run the business offsite without informing anybody about the situation.

But defense attorneys in response papers took responsibility for the actions of the Sabhnanis, saying that it was a misunderstanding and that they had not told their clients that the arrangement the prosecutors had complained off was a violation of the bail conditions.

In court papers, Mrs. Sabhnani’s attorney, Steven Scaring, wrote concerning the business that was conducted outside the home: “Defense counsel did not advise the Sabhnanis that this arrangement violated their conditions of release.

And one of Mr. Sabhnani’s attorneys, Susan Wolfe, wrote to Judge Platt: “There has been no attempt to hide the fact that these employees were working from their own homes or the subcontractor’s factory office.”

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