CENTRAL ISLIP (New York), May 16: A multi-millionaire Indian-origin couple living in Long Island, who run an international business distributing perfume, were arrested on Tuesday by federal agents on charges of keeping two Indonesian women as slaves in their posh Muttontown home for the last several years.

The couple, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 45, and her husband, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, were accused of inflicting tortures on one of the Indonesian women, while threatening to have the other one’s family arrested in Indonesia if she did not obey orders, according to officials. The women had been hired as housekeepers.

The Sabhnanis were arraigned in US District Court on charges under a federal anti-slavery statute of obtaining “the labour and services of another person by use of threats of serious physical harm to and physical restraint against that person”.

One of the two Indonesian women was beaten by Varsha Sabhnani with a broomstick, cut behind the ears with a knife, burnt with scalding water, made to walk up and down stairs as much as 150 times in a row, and, at one point, was forced to eat “25 extremely hot chilli peppers”, according to Jones and Lesko. The women were identified in court papers only as Samirah and Nona.

Authorities became involved after Samirah, 51, was found wandering near a doughnut shop by employees early Mother’s Day morning, court papers said. She was wearing pants and a towel drapped around her shoulders, the papers said. Magistrate Kathleen Tomlinson held both Sabhnanis without bail pending a hearing on Wednesday. If convicted, each faces a sentence of 210 to 262 months in prison. The women were forced to work 21 hours a day, from 4 am to 1 am “seven days a week,” Jones and Lesko said.

They were promised payments of $200 and $100 a month, but federal prosecutors said they were never given money directly. One of the victim’s daughters living in Indonesia was sent $100 a month, prosecutors said.

The women legally arrived in the US on B-1 visas in 2002; the Sabhnanis then confiscated their passports and refused to let them leave their home, authorities said.