UK court convicts Maoist leader of rape

LONDON: A British court on Friday convicted a Maoist cult leader of raping two of his followers and imprisoning his own daughter for 30 years in the London commune that he ran.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, known as Comrade Bala, was at the heart of a communist group in the 1970s.
The defendant was stone-faced as the guilty verdicts were read out but one of his former followers shouted: "You are sending an innocent man to prison. Shame on you!"
He "used psychological and sexual oppression and violence to force his followers into believing he was a god," said Baljit Ubhey of the Crown Prosecution Service, which pursued the case against him.
Balakrishnan came to Britain from Singapore in 1963 and enrolled at the London School of Economics.
The trial heard that he had brainwashed his followers and fathered a daughter with one of them in 1983.